


Aftermath

by jotunemo



Series: Another little piece of my mind [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Comics), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, All the Good Stuff Really, Child Abandonment, Childhood Trauma, Dissociation, Dissociative Amnesia, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Doesn't he always, Drug Abuse, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Forced Prostitution, Gen, High School AU, Human AU, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Leukemia, Loki (Marvel) Angst, Loki (Marvel) Needs a Hug, Loki Feels, Loki Whump, Loki hurts, Loss of Control, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Nikias has boatloads of issues too, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Odin (Marvel)'s A+ Parenting, POV Frigga, POV Hela, POV Loki (Marvel), POV Thor (Marvel), Pornography, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Frigga (Marvel), Protective Thor (Marvel), Protective Tony Stark, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Sexual Abuse, Sorry Not Sorry, Substance Abuse, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempts, Teenage Drama, The Author Regrets Nothing, Thor 2011 alternate universe, Tony Stark & Thor Friendship, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark is a good friend, Trauma, Underage Prostitution, ace Loki, aspec, child pornography, hela's a+ parenting, tags will be added as the story progresses, teenage angst, teenage loki, there's gonna be a lot of f-words, this author can't write happy loki, tw abuse, tw blood, tw cancer, tw cursing, tw graphic depictions of self-harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:00:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 23
Words: 96,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27531895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jotunemo/pseuds/jotunemo
Summary: After violence erupted in the house of Odin, the abusive, dysfunctional family dynamics are now out in the open, forcing everyone to readjust. A confused and terrified Loki hides inside his head in Hela's LA apartment because he is convinced that he killed his brother and can't go back to his family even though the Las Vegas police are frantically searching for him. Frigga has to deal with unpleasant accusations from the authorities. Thor is fighting for his life in the hospital. Hela dabbles in parenting while simultaneously battling her cancer and her drug addiction. And Odin is still mainly Odin.
Relationships: Frigga & Thor, Frigga | Freyja & Loki (Marvel), Hela & Leah, Hela & Loki (Marvel), Hela & Nikias, Hela/Thanos, Loki & Odin (Marvel), Loki & Thanos, Loki & Thor (Marvel), Odin/Frigga, Thor & Tony
Series: Another little piece of my mind [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1751101
Comments: 329
Kudos: 116





	1. Welcome to LA

**Author's Note:**

> This is the third part of a series based on the events of the MCU that explores the psyche of a human Loki in a human environment and I highly doubt that it'd make sense to you without the previous parts. It's like watching Avengers without watching Thor first. 
> 
> Now, please "enjoy" the first chapter and mind the tags, please x

_Fuck off_ , screams Hela as the three men close in on her but no sound comes out and she’s horrified at first before the part of her mind that’s already somewhat lucid again becomes aware that she’s dreaming, reminding her that dreams don’t follow the same logic that rules the waking world. Which is why she’s screaming without vocal cords, tonelessly struggling against her filthy attackers who have already pinned her down to the cold, wet concrete, pulling down her pants, leering at her, grabbing her ass and thighs. She tries to wake up, which isn’t easy when you’re smashed because your body is so busy trying to rid itself of all the poison that everything else comes second, but eventually she succeeds. When she is finally half-awake, meaning that the nightmare stopped playing in her head even if her mind is still muddy, she realizes that someone else is screaming.

For real.

Her eyes flutter open— _headache_ , _headache_ , _headache_ , _fuck_ , _fuck_ , _fuck_ —and she rolls over for comfort but finds the bed empty. The first light of dawn is creeping into the room and she blinks, reaching for her phone. Six forty-seven a.m.

 _The fuck_?

She needs a moment before reality sinks in. Before it registers that the screams are coming from the next room.

The kid.

Why did she bring him here, again? She rolls out of bed and reaches for a headscarf, covering her ugly ass head as she staggers towards the room where the kid is sleeping, her vision blurry. _Yep_ , _still smashed_. _Need more sleep_. She makes a detour into the bathroom to puke her guts out because mixing booze with chemotherapy drugs does that kind of thing to the stomach. It also tears the inside of the mouth apart. She takes a few sips of water when she’s done, gives a low wince of pain and heads for her studio. She’s halfway convinced to find her vulture of a boyfriend on top of the kid when she opens the door because he generally has no scruples taking what he wants and, after last night, she’s pretty sure that he wants the kid and that he’ll do everything in his power to persuade her into letting him take the kid to the house.

Not that it actually takes a lot to persuade Hela Davis. A bag of powder usually does the trick.

Thankfully, the kid is alone though. He’s lying on the couch, thrashing in terror, eyes wide open, screaming his fucking head off, which makes her feel as if she traveled back in time to two-thousand-fucking-three.

“What’s going on?” shouts Hela but she gets no response. “Calm down! You’re gonna wake up the whole fucking building!”

The kid keeps screaming even though he’s already awake, which doesn’t make any fucking sense, or maybe she’s only imagining his open eyes.

“Hey,” yells Hela. “Shut up!”

She grabs him by the shoulders, trying to shake him but then her fingers feel something under the fabric of his sweater. A sling. She lets go and he keeps screaming and the noise is threatening to shatter Hela’s aching half leftover-wasted, half already-hungover head into a thousand pieces. “Hey, calm down,” she pleads, putting her hand on his head, which feels beyond weird and doesn’t help any more than it did when he was an infant.

But at least his head is now big enough to cover his mouth without running the risk of accidentally suffocating him, which is what she does, pressing her hands down as she bends over him, one on top of the other. “Shshsh,” Hela hisses. “Stop screaming, okay?”

The kid’s eyes open wider and he whimpers and tries to breathe in through his nose, choking on the air, panting, staring at her in disbelief.

“I’ll let go if you shut up,” she promises but she doesn’t last that long because the kid is fucking miserable. When she lifts her hands, he stops screaming but starts crying, hyperventilating really, with lip-quivering and crocodile-tears-spilling-out-of-his-eyes and all the rest. “Come on, stop it. You’re too old to freak out over a nightmare,” Hela sighs as she collapses into her tattoo chair because her legs no longer support her. “I had a nightmare too, you know, but a nightmare isn’t a good enough reason to lose your marbles. Nightmares are reminders of what you survived and they prove to you that you can survive it again. All you gotta do”—she snaps her fingers—“is wake up.”

The kid stares at her in utter confusion, biting his quivering lip, more tears spilling out, and he rolls himself into a ball and buries his nose between his legs, whimpering.

“Just get it together, okay? Life is tough, I know,” Hela mumbles, her eyes closing against her will because her fucked-up body is screaming for more sobering-up sleep. “And it sucks when you have nowhere to go or no one to turn to but that’s how it is for some of us. Crying won’t change that. When I was your age, I didn’t even have a place to stay. You should be a little more grateful that you at least have a roof over your head after what you did or that you aren’t locked up in jail or the looney bin right now with a thousand cops and shrinks all over you. When I hurt someone for the first time, I had to hide in a barn and it was cold and dark and wet and stinky and …”

The whimpering has stopped.

Hela forces her eyes open. To her surprise, the kid fell back asleep. _Who would have thought that she had it in her to tell a bedtime story_? She quietly chuckles to herself but before she can find the strength to get up and back to bed, she drifts off again herself.

* * *

Loki instinctively reaches for his blanket when a shiver runs through him, which is rather strange because he’s still roaming around the jungle with no intention to leave, still looking for either Leah or the toddler, looking for them to tell him what the hell happened over the weekend. The Voice is following him but every time he tries to speak to him, the guy seems to dissolve into thin air and isn’t that weird. Everything is weird. Loki can’t tell if he’s dreaming this time because the landscape around him is all hazy, a smudgy drunken blur, like a trip almost or, at least, how he imagines a trip to be but how can he be dreaming if he is spending conscious time in the world inside his head? Well, semi-conscious at best, but it doesn’t matter. He must be here, right, because he isn’t _there_ anymore. He’s no longer in his room, no longer standing in front of his shattered mirror, his shattered existence. He is _here_ , in the jungle. He _is_. He knows it and then, as if to prove to him that he is, that booming voice, the one even Nikias was afraid of an eternity ago, calls out for someone named Killian, the echo of its words thundering through the air and raising the hairs on Loki’s arm, and, on a sudden impulse, he sets himself in motion. He starts running, back towards the cave and then he is in the body again and he shivers again, trying to hug his blanket tighter around him only to realize that it isn’t his blanket he’s wrapping around himself.

It’s too thin. Too sticky. Too smelly.

Loki’s eyes snap open and the first thing he sees is Hela, who is sprawled out in a black dentist kind of chair, legs apart, arms crossed, her lips slightly open, her eyes closed, a headscarf covering her head.

A wave of terror submerging him, he sizes up the room—taking in the dark green walls, the framed photos on the wall, the ink bottles and tattoo guns on the shelves—before he looks outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, staring at the first rays of sunlight spilling through the crevices between the tall buildings outside.

It takes his brain a moment or two to process that the sun is rising over the skyline of Los fucking Angeles.

Loki jolts into a sitting position, his heart slamming against his ribcage.

 _How did he_ …

 _What the_ …

 _Why_ …

There’s no clear thought he can grasp. Words are fleeing his mind, leaving an empty void where his brain should be. An empty, throbbing void. Loki swallows. Desperately tries to remember because this is beyond reasonable doubt the worst fucking blackout he _ever_ had and how in the freaking fuck could he have ended up three-hundred miles from home with that woman after … after …

The last thing Loki remembers is his fist; his fist crashing into his mirror again and again and again almost by itself in a sudden outburst of despair because he couldn’t stand to see his face that looks so much like her face glaring back at him. Couldn’t stand to be in that room anymore because he knew deep down, still knows, that he should never have grown up in that room. He should’ve died as a baby. _Pathetic waste of space_. _You don’t deserve life_. _Don’t deserve normal_. _Don’t deserve a family_. And then his Dad threatened to shunt him off to a psych ward and he yelled at him and he yelled at Frigga and he yelled at Thor too and Loki asked Thor to stay with him and his Dad freaked out over this.

Freaked out so badly that he had a heart attack.

And, then, nothing.

Not a single shred of memory.

Just a black void and a killer headache. A dry mouth. A pounding heart. A hangover the size of China.

Loki swallows again because his throat is so unbearably tight and his mouth is so parched that his tongue seems to be glued to his gum and the terror washing over him is so unspeakably intense that it won’t even allow him to cry and how could he even cry with no liquid left inside his body? For a few terrible moments, he just sits on that couch, Hela snoring a few feet away from him, the Californian sun pouring into the room.

Eventually, Loki manages to get up on shaky legs that almost betray him.

He draws a deep breath, tearing his tongue loose from his gum, and tiptoes towards the door, his eyes landing on the key sticking out of the lock from the inside. He pulls it out with trembling hands and quietly shuts the door behind him, his heart beating so fast that he fears it’ll prompt an earthquake that shakes the entire West Coast. He turns the key, the noise so much louder than it should be, and locks the woman who gave birth to him instead of having a fucking abortion in her amateur tattoo studio.

He listens for a moment but there is no sound except for his own blood pounding in his ears.

Loki draws another breath, a stomach churning nausea welling up inside of him as he inspects the rest of what he assumes to be Hela’s apartment. There’s an empty bedroom next to the studio, which reeks of sweat and booze and something else he can’t identify, and then there’s a living area with a kitchenette on the right, a couch and a TV set on the left and a dining room table with four chairs in between. There’s an overflowing ashtray on it, along with an empty glass, two half-empty glasses and two bottles of gin, one empty, the other one still containing a little over a hand’s breath of booze.

Loki walks towards the table, picks up the bottle and pours the rest of the gin down his throat to calm himself down.

 _Just go for it_ , _Mom_. _It’ll help with the tightness in your chest_.

This time, tears do well into his eyes and Loki reaches for the phone on the table, trying to stifle them but the phone has a fingerprint lock.

 _Mama_.

Loki tries to breathe, tries to stay in control because he knows that he can’t stay here. This is no place for him. He needs to go back home to his Mom and to Thor. He needs to … _get it the fuck together_. Loki glances down, inspecting his clothes. He’s still wearing the green hoodie he was wearing when he punched the mirror and it’s drenched in blood. So much fucking blood.

 _Can’t leave the house like this_.

Suddenly running on autopilot, Loki walks into Hela’s bedroom, opens her closet, picking a pair of pants and a top and a blouse, sniffing at it to make to make sure the clothes don’t smell like a hundred shady bars, and then walks into the bathroom. He slips out of his shoes and sweatpants but when he tries to take off his sweater, grabbing it by the bottom hem and trying to pull it over his head, there’s a sharp pain jolting through his arms, chest and shoulder.

 _Oh_ , _right_. _Almost forgot_.

Loki opens the drawers and bathroom cabinets, inspecting its contents. There’s a hand and nail care case, nail polish, nail polish remover, bottles of body wash and shampoo— _no time to shower_ —and an unused tooth brush. Loki opens the case, takes out the scissors and cuts through the front of his sweater, eventually peeling it off of him. He struggles into Hela’s black jeans, astonished to realize that they fit even if they end a little short at the ankles and are a little loose on the hips, leaves the tank top for obvious reasons and puts on the blouse, wincing when he buttons it. He quickly brushes his teeth and helps himself to Hela’s make-up to cover up his bruise as best as he can, halfway expecting her to start screaming and banging against the door at any second but the apartment remains silent. He tries to brush his hair next but the pain is almost unbearable.

 _Please wait for me before you try to get out of the tub_ , _okay_? _And remember that you’re not supposed to raise your arms above your head_.

Stifling another sob, Loki flips his head upside down and quickly brushes his hair before he pulls it into a loose ponytail, twisting it into a messy bun on the top of his head and fixing it with a hair tie because he can’t possibly walk out of here looking like a goddamn hobo.

Loki inspects the pockets of his own clothes to see if he—well, whoever—brought anything but there’s nothing in them, so he leaves them on the floor and he leaves the bathroom and the apartment.

He has no idea where to go or what to do but he’ll think of something. He’s smart after all. He’ll find a way to get back home and he’s trying to ignore the fact that it’s morning and that he definitely spent the night at Hela’s place and how the hell did that even happen? This question raises all sorts of other questions Loki would rather not think about because the most important thing is that he got out of there and that Hela won’t stop him because she’s dead asleep. High asleep. Whatever.

Loki closes the front door behind him and starts walking, running almost, no, _not almost_ , he starts running because he needs to get away and where to doesn’t really matter at this moment.

Although it does because he needs to get his hands on a fucking phone.

“Where are you going?” asks a man who’s walking into his direction. He’s carrying breakfast, a paper bag and three cups of coffee in a cardboard holder tray, and he’s wearing black jeans and a black tank top, flaunting an enormous biceps. He is bald and huge, much bigger than Thor, both in size and muscles, and that says a whole lot. Loki tries to ignore him, tries to push past him but the man grabs him by the arm and Loki gasps because his grip is so firm that his injured shoulder seems to burst into flames instantly. The man narrows his eyes at him and Loki gulps because, _holy fucking shit_ , this man’s stare tolerates no dissent and what the hell did he get himself into this time?

“Y-you’re mistaking me for someone else,” Loki stammers even though that guy is carrying three cups of coffee and there were three glasses on the table, so he and Hela must have had company. “I just …”

The man’s eyes narrow to slits. “Did you seriously just try to bolt after you promised your mother that you would try to help her?”

Loki’s heart sinks because he instinctively knows that there’s no escaping this man. He has the sort of presence you don’t get to run away from. He is like the bullies in school, only much, much worse.

“Hela is not my mother,” Loki snaps because Frigga was right, a family is a social construct, and even if they aren’t biologically related, his adoptive family is the only family Loki ever knew. It’s a bit like in the allegory of the cave where the prisoners are chained to the wall and believe the shadows to be real even though they are created by the sun shining into the cave. Frigga, Odin and Thor are his shadows. They’re his reality even though they aren’t his _real_ family, whatever that means. If you believed Leah, it doesn’t mean anything and maybe Thor was right. Maybe he should really try to see things from her perspective because for her, things seem to be very clear and, at this very moment, things are very clear for Loki as well. He wants to go home, _home to his family_. There is nothing he wants more than that.

“But at least she got you out of there in time and you don’t really want to live with having denied a dying cancer patient a chance to live, right?” he asks, drilling his imperious gaze into Loki, fixing him in place. “You aren’t that kind of person, are you?”

“W-who are you?” Loki gulps and then he chuckles nervously because it’s obvious that he should know who this man is. “I mean, what’s your name, again?” He harrumphs. “It seems to have slipped my mind.”

“Thanos.”

Another involuntary chuckle slips past Loki’s lips. “Is that a street name?”

The guy glares at him. “Why?”

“I don’t know it just sounds like it’s short for Thanatos and, uh, forget it.” Loki’s heart gives a lurch as he forces himself to hold the man’s gaze. The gaze of a predator. “Me helping her won’t change anything. She’ll never live a long and blissful life even if she beats her cancer and I should never have come here.”

Loki tries to jerk away but the man’s grip around his wrist is as tight as a jaw vise. “Let me go,” Loki pleads, suddenly longing for Nikias or someone else to take over but they’re far out of reach. _Typical_. They only ever show up when you _don’t_ need them.

“You really want to go home? After what you _did_?” asks Thanos and the grim tone of his voice gives Loki the fucking creeps because, apparently, he did something really horrible. Something far more horrible than the usual kind of horrible, which makes sense because he ended up in fucking LA with his fucking birthmother and Frigga wouldn’t ever have let that happen under normal circumstances, whatever normal means in his family. Loki tries to remember harder because Nikias was present the entire time after Loki’s desire to chug down some wine finally pushed Leah out of the body and that never bodes well. Their conciousnesses were pretty much converged throughout the entire conversation with Hela and they pushed each other out and regained control over the body several times. And if Nikias was the one to finally take over for good in Loki’s room after all the shit Hela and Odin threw into their face … Loki racks his brain for a way to ask what happened that doesn’t involve having to concede that he doesn’t remember but he draws a complete blank and he panics, all the air leaving his lungs because he feels trapped, _so very trapped_ , fuck, fuck, fuck, _even if he bolts_ , _there’s no escape from this man_ , he just knows it. Senses it, in every fiber of his being.

“Let me show you what’ll await you if you run back home now,” says Thanos, finally letting go of his arm because he probably senses that Loki wants to know what happened. Needs to know, in fact, because if he doesn’t know, how could he possibly return and try to act like he knows what happened and make the right excuses? It’s becoming so fucking exhausting to have to do that on a regular basis and he just wants someone to shed light on the events of the past days; even if it’s someone as creepy as this Thanos guy.

“Hold this,” says Thanos, thrusting the breakfast bag and the cardboard holder tray with the coffee mugs into Loki’s hand before he fishes his phone out of his jeans pocket. Loki holds on to the breakfast while the guy who might or might not be Hela’s pimp or boyfriend or drug dealer or all of those rolled into one is swiping across his phone screen. “Here,” he finally says, holding the display out for him to see.

It’s a breaking news video and there’s a red banner in white letters on top of the screen that informs the public that Loki Odinson, 15, is still missing and there’s a photo of him and there’s a cop in a black suit and a white shirt and a black tie, whom another blue banner at the bottom identifies as Det. Phil Coulson, LVMPD. “The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department is asking for the public’s assistance in locating this fifteen-year-old boy who was last seen in his home yesterday afternoon before he ran away after a violent altercation,” says the detective and everything inside of Loki freezes, the breakfast slipping out of his hands, landing on the sidewalk, the coffee sloshing onto the pavement. “He is likely wearing black pants and a dark green sweater covered in blood. If you have any information about his whereabouts, please call the number displayed below immediately. The boy is in a volatile psychological state. He might be acting confused or child-like and he needs medical care. We ask all citizens to keep their eyes open but advise you not to approach. If you see him—”

The cop keeps on talking but Loki can’t focus on his words anymore because, _holy fucking hell_ , this is a whole new level of fucked-up and, _fuck_ , _fuck_ , _fuck_ , the last time Loki thought something to be a whole new level of fucked-up, his mother had to pick him up from his High School infirmary after a mental breakdown but this … _this_ is so much worse.

“You stabbed your own brother,” says Thanos and Loki’s chest yawns open like a hell mouth, devouring his heart and tearing it apart with giant fangs because Loki can’t live without Thor and if Nikias … if he … if Thor is … “If you go back to your family now, you’ll end up in jail. You know that, right?”

Tears spring to Loki’s eyes and his vision begins to flicker and that’s the last thing that registers with him, or maybe not _the_ last thing, because that creepy man pulls Loki into a side-hug with his muscular arms, pressing him close.

“Welcome to LA,” says Thanos as Loki’s mind erupts into whiteness.


	2. More than meets the eye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Frigga wakes in the hospital while Hela is having second thoughts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, I want to thank you all so much for the comments. They meant a lot to me and, of course you were all right, it's going to be a bumpy ride. Second, yes, I'm a day late but here is the new chapter for you xx
> 
> [tw vomit]

For a few blissful seconds, Frigga Fjörgyndottir remains oblivious to what happened to her family the night before as her mind is starting to shake off its sedative-induced slumber. For a few blissful seconds, she thinks she is lying in her own bed in her own home but then she moves her head and her stiff neck screams in agony and then her eyes snap open and the horror is coming back like a tidal wave submerging her entire being. She is sitting by Thor’s side where she spent the night in a chair pulled close to his bed, her head resting on her shoulder, and she is surrounded by a beeping cardiac monitor and other machines. Thor is still sleeping, or maybe he is unconscious, and there’s a tube sticking out of his mouth that she doesn’t remember being there the previous night.

“Good morning,” says a man and Frigga’s head snaps sideways, her eyes landing on Detective Coulson, who is lurking by the door with a Styrofoam cup of coffee in his hand, the expression on his face unnervingly unreadable.

She swallows, realizing that her throat is parched. “Any news? Did you … find my son?”

He shakes his head. “I’m sorry. Do you still have no idea where he could have gone to? Do you have any family living close by, perhaps?”

Frigga winces at the accusation in his tone. “Both of his grandparents are dead. His uncle, aunt and cousins live in Norway. We only see them at Christmas. As I told you, Loki was pretty … isolated. He didn’t have much of a life outside the family,” she tells him and the thought of Loki— _Nikias_?—still out there all by himself in a bloody shirt and a cut up hand makes her stomach churn because it’s already morning and he has already been gone for—she glances at the clock—fifteen hours and if he doesn’t return home … if he hurt or killed himself in his state of despair … If he … She can’t finish the thought. “Wh-what about Hela though?” she adds, devastated and infuriated by the cop’s idleness.

He shakes his head once more.

“But she was treated _here_ , for God’s sake. Couldn’t you get her contact details from her medical records?”

“The hospital denied us access,” Coulson informs her dryly. “You only gave us her first name and, unfortunately, that wasn’t specific enough without a surname or a date of birth. As you’re probably aware, we can’t request access to medical files as long as our request doesn’t match exactly one person. We’re currently waiting for the judge’s authorization.”

Frigga draws a sharp breath because now that her mind is clear again, she does remember Hela’s last name even though she still doesn’t recall them having asked her about it the previous night. “Her name was Hela Davis. At least it was sixteen years ago.”

“Date of birth?”

“I don’t know.” Her shoulders slump as she tries to do the math. “She was born in, uh, 1987, I think.”

The detective nods but before he can give a reply, his phone rings and he excuses himself, striding out of the room, leaving Frigga to herself. She spots her purse on the windowsill and dimly remembers the officers reminding her to take her phone, keys and wallet with her. She gets up on wobbly legs and searches for her phone, hoping to have heard from Loki but her display mocks her with a number of irrelevant notifications. She tries to call her son before she remembers that he left his phone on his desk. That she called Nine-One-One from his phone.

Her legs almost give out at the thought of Loki’s outburst, his hysterically hostile tone, the alien glint of rage in his eye, the shard of glass in his hands, stabbing into his brother’s side moments after he asked Thor to stay with him, his eyes full of despair, longing, mortification.

Frigga tries to steady herself, drinking a few sips of water from the faucet, splashing her face.

It does nothing. She walks back to the chair and practically collapses into it, phone clutched in her hands for support, her entire body and mind seemingly unraveling with no way to stop it.

She puts her phone on her lap and reaches for Thor’s arm again, stroking over the back of his hand, thinking about how healthy he looked when she first saw him in their gym again after an entire summer. It was only a little over a week ago but seems like a freaking lifetime now. She is thinking about how, compared to Loki, he never seemed to need her after he hit puberty. Thinking about his infectious smile, his straightforwardness, his gentleness that always won over his temper in the past. Thinking too about how he sat by Loki’s bed when his little brother was afflicted by his night terrors, trying to calm him down. Thinking about how he picked Loki up and gently carried him to her car after he broke down in the cabin. Thinking about how he cared for Loki when he regressed to the age of a toddler. Thinking about how he used to storm across the football field like a lightning bolt, a huge grin on his face.

He has always been this rock for his brother, for her—invincible, sturdy, vigorous, even when he was still a boy.

Frigga doesn’t realize she is crying until the tears stream down her face because it never occurred to her before just how drastically life as you know it can change in the blink of an eye. She brings Thor’s hands to her mouth, brushing her lips against his skin, whispering soft declarations of love, soft pleas to whoever cares to listen to her prayers that her son will pull through and that Loki is safe.

She starts blaming herself out of sheer habit, going against herself because she didn’t pay close enough attention to her sons’ deteriorating relationship or the voices Loki’s been hearing, instead assuming that their age difference was to blame for their quarrels. She’s dimly aware that this won’t get her anywhere because shouldering the blame for everything as if her sons weren’t their own persons capable of making their own decisions won’t help anyone, especially not now, _no_ , beating herself up won’t magically wake Thor up or lure Loki back home. She tries to convince herself that it’s not her fault. That she couldn’t have known because neither of them let her in. That she did the best she could. That she was always there for them and that she can’t be blamed if Loki never talked to her. That, even though she is their mother, it is not in her power to—

“Mrs. Fjörgyndottir?”

She stifles a sob and wipes her eyes before she looks up, her eyes meeting the compassionate gaze of a doctor.

“H-how is he?” asks Frigga.

“His vitals are critical but stable,” the doctor repeats his assessment from the previous night as he inspects the readings on the various machines, his words sending a chill down Frigga’s spine because she only now remembers that stable merely means that a patient’s vital signs are within normal limits. It doesn’t mean that they’re conscious and or that their injuries aren’t life-threatening anymore. “He lost a lot of blood though and his body went into shock. On top of that, the shard penetrated between the ninth and tenth vertebra of his thoracic spine, which we only discovered during surgery and—”

“What does _that_ mean?” Frigga gasps and, once more, she sees Thor on the football field in front of her inner eye, sees him come home from a run or take a dive into the pool, always in motion, always burning off energy. “He’ll walk again, right?”

The doctor whose nametag reads Laghari clears his throat. “We certainly hope so. His neurologic function shows no deviations and we managed to stabilize the infection. This is all we can do for now.”

Frigga nods, slowly releasing a trembling breath. “How long until he wakes up?”

Dr. Laghari shrugs his apologies. “We can’t tell but he’s a very healthy young man and he is in great physical shape. I am confident he’ll make a swift recovery.”

 _Good_. _Confidence is good_.

“What about my husband?” asks Frigga, mystified that she did not even think about Odin for one second until this very moment; which makes it clear to her once more that their marriage has come to an unnoticed end somewhere along the way.

Dr. Laghari’s face sours. “Against our urgent recommendations, he discharged himself about an hour ago after checking in with you and your son.”

Something inside Frigga crumbles. “He _what_? Is he fit enough to … I mean, is he …”

“His cardiac readings were stable enough but that doesn’t have to mean anything,” says the doctor. “The first twenty-four to forty-eight hours after a heart attack is when the patient’s condition is most unstable. Usually, we keep patients here for a minimum of three days. We had to label his case AMA. Discharge ‘against medical advice’,” he elaborates when he sees the confusion in her eyes. “To legally shield us from liability in case anything happens. He signed it.”

“Did he say anything?” Frigga enquires weakly.

“Just that he had to make a summation in court.”

 _What on earth?_ It shouldn’t surprise and infuriate her as much as it does since Odin’s work came first for as long as she can remember but, after having a heart attack and considering that one of the boys they raised together has life-threatening injuries while the other one is missing, she assumed that he’d stay put for a few days.

 _Tsk_.

She should have known better but even so, she feels a burning rage in the pit of her stomach because that stubborn old man just left her here by herself to defend Senator Brody instead of caring for his family, providing emotional support for his wife and son.

The doctor excuses himself, which barely registers with her, and she picks up her phone to call Odin’s number but his line is busy. _Damn that old fool_. Frigga reaches for Thor’s hand again, squeezing it in both of hers. “Your father is such an irredeemable idiot,” she whispers, trying to blink away the tears welling into her eyes as she kisses her son’s hand. “I can’t believe he did such a reckless thing. What was he even thinking?”

Of course, Frigga does not receive a reply except for the machine’s beeping and her thoughts begin to wander once more. To Loki’s breakdown the previous weekend, to his breakdown in the cabin, to Loki’s stay in this very hospital, to Thor’s accusations, to Hela ringing the doorbell after sixteen years of radio silence, to the confrontation in the kitchen.

 _Do you even know what happened in your absence_?

The question pops up again, unbidden and out of nowhere, and she ponders over it, the minutes ticking by on the wall clock even though time still doesn’t mean anything. It is almost as if it has been forced into standstill by the beeping of the machines and the hustle of doctors and nurses.

Hospitals truly are odd places to spend your time.

After a while, Detective Coulson walks back into the room, informing her that there is no patient with the name of Hela Davis who received care in this hospital this week or any other time this year. “Is she still going by that name?”

“I-I don’t know. I mean, I haven’t see her in sixteen years and …” The detective gives a compassionate nod that she can tell is forced, which is why she tries to pull herself together. “She didn’t contradict us when we called her by that name but I suppose … I mean … Maybe she did change it. With her past, it’s not entirely unthinkable.”

The detective gives a grim nod. “We issued both an APB and an amber alert for Loki but so far, there is nothing, I am afraid. We dug up Hela’s file too, checking her juvenile records. It seems that she moved to LA in 2005 but—”

“LA?” gasps Frigga, terrified of the possibility that Loki ended up in another jurisdiction that far away from home.

“Yes. She lived there for a while and was charged with cocaine possession twice but after 2008, there is no more record of her,” says Coulson. “It’s almost as if she ceased to exist. We put an APB out for her too, alerting law enforcement across the country.”

“So, there’s nothing we can do at this point?” asks Frigga, her voice breaking.

“Yes, there is,” begins Detective Coulson. “I want you to reach out to Loki on national television. We’re going to set up a press conference and I want you to speak to your son, tell him to come home. Reach out to Hela, too.”

Frigga nods, an astonished laugh rising in her throat.

“What?” asks the detective.

“You don’t seem to be treating Loki as a suspect,” Frigga whispers. “No offense but I do find that rather … odd.”

“You don’t seem to have a very high opinion of law enforcement, Ma’am.” His face is unreadable but, if his tone is anything to go by, he is slightly offended.

Frigga shrugs. “As I’m sure you don’t have a very high opinion of defense attorneys.”

“Well, in this case, we’re on the same side.” Coulson smiles grimly. “We received a call from a woman named Dr. Janet van Dyne earlier this morning. She told us that Loki was scheduled to start therapy with her this week and she seemed genuinely concerned about him.” His lips twitch slightly. “She also told us that Loki is suffering from a dissociative disorder and that it’s highly likely that he cannot be held accountable for what he did to his brother.”

“I suppose it wasn’t enough for you when _I_ told you that,” Frigga points out sourly.

“You didn’t,” says Coulson, his face still grim as he pulls out his phone, swiping the screen. “Not in such concise terms, anyway. Your husband did though. He said, and I quote, ‘We made a mistake. We should have put Loki in a psych ward long ago but we had no idea his mental issues were actually that serious. You know how teenagers are. They have this penchant for dramatization that makes it almost impossible to distinguish between normal hysteria and something worse’.”

Frigga inhales a sharp breath in response to Odin’s blatant disdain.

“I also spoke to a certain Dr. Strange who treated your missing son in this very hospital just a few days ago,” Coulson continues before Frigga has a chance to speak. “And he told me that Thor physically assaulted his brother, which you somehow failed to mention. So, there’s certainly more here than meets the eye and let me assure you that I am taking this case very seriously. I am aware that the mentally ill aren’t always treated properly by law enforcement officials but we’re talking about a fifteen-year-old boy here who has clearly been mistreated within his own home before he lashed out like he did.”

Frigga swallows as the detective drills his gaze into her. “I know,” she whispers, her voice barely above a whisper and then the truth spills out of her like water boiling in a pot because she is done lying, done pretending. “My husband, he … He also laid hands on him sometimes, which I didn’t come to know until very recently, but Thor … That was a one-time … He didn’t …”

Detective Coulson raises his hands to silence her. “Please, Mrs. Fjörgyndottir, do yourself a favor and don’t make this look any worse than it already—”

“Worse?” Frigga echoes, all her knowledge about law enforcement agencies and how they operate going out of the window because of her personal distress. “In case Dr. Strange forgot to mention it, Loki tricked Thor into giving him driving lessons. He lied to him about already having a permit. He drove them straight onto the highway, switching lanes without looking. Thor was scared for his life and, yes, he hurt him but Thor isn’t a violent person by nature. He lost his temper but he immediately told me what he did and he was brimful with remorse. He did not abuse or mistreat him. Not in the … traditional sense of the word.”

“The traditional sense of the word?” Coulson echoes, raising an eyebrow at her. “Just to be clear here. Did Thor splinter Loki’s collarbone and bruise his eye or didn’t he?”

“He did,” Frigga breathes.

“You see, nothing escalates as violently as it did in your house last night without any previous history,” Coulson tells her as if she was actually stupid. “I’ve been a cop for almost twenty years, the last five of which I’ve been working cases as a lead detective for the Crimes Against Youth and Family squad, and I know from experience that, if something like this happens, there is usually a long history of—”

“Violence,” Frigga finishes for him. “I know but—”

“But, of course, it’s always different when it happens in your own home,” says Coulson and, curiously enough, he doesn’t sound overly hostile anymore. “I get it. Your family is not like all those other families in which children are abused. There was a reason, right?”

Frigga exhales a long breath, all the fight leaving her because how could she possibly tell that man how fiercely her sons loved each other before these voices began to speak to her youngest and tried to convince him he wasn’t to spend any time with his big brother anymore? Tears pool into her eyes and she tries to wipe them away. “What happens if you find him?” she asks in a low whisper because she has too much experience with these kind of cases and because the detective made his standpoint more than clear. “Are you … going to take him away from us?”

“He’ll undergo psychiatric evaluation and then, yes, we’ll have to determine appropriate custody,” says Coulson, looking a tiny little bit apologetic. “You know that this is our duty after what happened and after everything we’ve been told.”

 _We’ll have to call CPS_.

 _We’ll take him away from you if the Child Services investigator concludes that he isn’t safe in your home_.

“I understand,” Frigga whispers and she does, she really does, because she would have argued in favor of a CPS investigation instantly if this was another mother’s child they were talking about. Another child who has been through the exact same things Loki has been through. But it isn’t another mother’s child they’re talking about. It’s her own son whom she loves deeply and thinking about everything Loki will have to endure when he comes home, if it even is Loki who comes home, breaks her heart into a thousand pieces.

“Now, about that press statement,” Detective Coulson continues. “I assure you that I’ll leave no stone unturned to find Loki and bring him home safely but I’ll need your full cooperation.”

Frigga swallows. “Yes, of course.”

* * *

As Frigga is talking to the LVMPD detective, Hela wakes up in her studio again, another wave of nausea welling up in her stomach because she was stupid enough to drink almost an entire bottle of gin by herself. Oblivious of her surroundings, she springs to her feet, her head still pounding, and lunges towards the door. When she grabs the handle and pushes it down, yanking the door towards her, nothing happens. 

_What the hell_?

Hela’s gaze flits to the empty couch then where the kid cried himself back to sleep earlier this morning.

She is too astonished to react for a moment when she realizes that the little brat actually had the fucking guts to lock her up in her own studio. _The fuck_. She’s rattling at the door, calling out to the kid, cursing him with every expletive in her vocabulary because she suddenly feels trapped.

Her head explodes, heating up her face, her neck, her ears.

Her heart picks up speed.

Her belly revolts, the wretched remains of her liquid stomach contents rising and falling as she tries to breathe.

Hela’s gaze lands on her desk, under which she keeps a trash can but it’s already too late by then. Before she makes it even halfway across the room, vomit and bile slosh up the back of her throat and into her mouth, splashing onto the carpeted floor.

 _That little fuck_. Hela cleans her mouth with her sleeve, her breathing still heavy. _I am going to kill him_.

How could she even think for one freaking second that letting this little weirdo into her life here was actually a good idea?

She doesn’t know for how long she’s been standing there, trying to get her breathing under control, when she finally hears the key being turned inside the front door.

“Hello?” shouts her boyfriend who she never calls anything else, not even in her head, because the sound of his actual name gives her the fucking shivers.

“In here,” yells Hela, pounding on the door. “That little brat locked me in! Is he still there or did he bolt?”

“He tried to but I caught him,” says her boyfriend. “He’s with me.”

“Get me out of here!” Hela screeches because she still feels trapped even though she doesn’t have a fucking reason to feel that way in her own fucking apartment where she’s safe.

“Where is the key?” asks her boyfriend.

“How am I supposed to fucking know that? Just go look for it, for fuck’s sake!” Hela screams. After a few moments, the door unlocks and her boyfriend stares at her, reaching for her elbows, a concerned expression stamped across his features. “He left it on the table.”

“How dare you lock me in there?” Hela pants as she jerks away from him and reaches for the kid’s shoulders, shaking him. “In my own fucking home? You little piece of shit!”

The kid doesn’t react though. He just stares into nothingness. “What’s going on?” Hela stammers, her eyes searching for the gaze of her boyfriend. “What did you do?”

“Nothing. I reminded him of what he did and he just zoned out,” says he.

“What the … He knows what he did,” Hela mumbles. “He _told_ me.”

Her boyfriend shrugs and, then, the kid blinks several times, slowly transforming back into the person who drove her battered Celica from Vegas to LA with her asleep on the passenger seat like the sorry ass addict that she is. “How dare you?” Hela shouts again, shoving him away because she still doesn’t remember that his fucking arm is in a fucking sling.

The kid’s eyes narrow. “Doesn’t feel so good to be left in an enclosed space, huh?”

“Fuck you.” Hela grunts. “You’ll clean that up.”

“Forget it.” The kid cackles. “I’m not gonna clean up your puke.”

“Well, since _you_ locked her inside this room, it’s your fault she didn’t get to the bathroom in time.” Her boyfriend’s hand travels to the back of the kid’s neck, locking him inside his massive grip, proving once again that he can be quite useful sometimes. “And if she tells you to clean up, you _will_ clean up, understood?”

Something flickers through the kid’s eyes and, for a second, Hela is convinced he’ll put up a fight but eventually he gives a low wince of pain and his shoulders slump. “How?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Frigga still has a lot to unlearn and she will, given time. But right now, you can't really expect her to work on her issues, I guess. Regarding medical procedures, I am aware that no amount of research will make me an expert but this is fanfic and I do it for free, so I won't spend endless hours trying to get everything right. I'll dedicate these hours to getting the psychological as right as I can instead. 
> 
> See you soon x


	3. I'm done lying to myself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hela confronts a piece of her past and Frigga makes a decision.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am on sick leave, so the next chapter comes earlier than Sunday x

Frigga is standing in front of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police headquarters building, flanked by Detective Coulson and a few other law enforcement officials whose names she can’t be bothered to remember, gazing into a crowd of journalists holding cameras and microphones out towards them, the constant clicking driving her almost insane. It’s not the first time she is attending a press conference, of course. She has led several of them during high-profile cases, but this is the first time the impact of her words will affect her personally. This is the first time she’s so nervous that she thinks she might throw up and, despite everything she did for him and his beloved firm, Odin is not standing by her side now that it matters more to her than ever before. They tried to get him on the phone, she and the cops both, but all calls went straight to voicemail and, in that moment, shortly before she has to speak, Frigga knows that she’ll never forgive him for making her go through this awful, soul-crushing experience alone. For just walking out of that hospital because caring for his family still comes second, even at a time like this. Even after she told him that he had to choose whether he still wanted this family or not.

Knowing that Odin gave her his answer doesn’t make things any easier, though. It makes her curse herself for having been so blind.

“Now, we’ll give the word to Loki’s mother,” says Detective Coulson, forcing her to return to the moment. Forcing her to stay strong for the sake of her boy.

“Loki,” Frigga begins softly, her words a mixture of her own combined with the suggestions made by the police department’s criminal psychologist Dr. Bruce Banner. “Wherever you are, if you hear this, please know that you can come home. You probably feel horrible about what happened and what you did but we all know that it wasn’t your fault. We lied to you all your life and you had a lot to process last night. Nobody blames you for lashing out the way you did. We just want you home safe. _I_ just want you home safe. I love you, my boy, I love you so very much, and I understand that you’re upset because we kept the truth from you. I know there isn’t anything I can do to take that back and I won’t deny that we should’ve told you a long time ago. We made a mistake. _I_ made a mistake. I did it to protect you and, maybe, I also did it because I was afraid to lose you because, after I first picked you up and held you, all I ever wanted was to give you love and keep you safe.”

Frigga has to pause for breath because her voice is cracking, tears welling into her eyes.

* * *

Hela is rolling herself a spliff, watching the kid listen to Frigga’s words after he asked her to switch on the news at noon. His face is unreadable, which kinda freaks her out because she’s alone with him now after her boyfriend went out for, well, business and she still doesn’t know what she really brought upon herself by letting this disturbed kid who fucking _stabbed_ his own brother into her life. Who locked her inside her studio and drank almost a whole bottle of gin as if it was water the previous night. Who went to sleep and screamed like a fucking child before turning back into this creepy little fuck sitting on her couch right now, his eyes narrowed in anger. Not to mention that, judged by the look of confusion on his face earlier this morning, he apparently never used or even saw a mop before in his entire life. The way he tried to clean up her puke would have been hilarious if it hadn’t been so pitiful.

“That fucking hypocrite,” snarls the kid.

Hela glances up, focusing on the TV. “You mean Frigga?”

“Who else would I mean?”

Hela grunts. “Yeah, she’s like all ‘I love my children so much and I want what’s best for them and I would do everything for them except for calling my powerful rich abusive piece of trash asshole husband out on his shit’. Looking the other way when someone fucks your children over for real is terrific parenting.”

“Sounds about right.” The kid laughs grimly. “Not that you’re one to judge, though.”

Before Hela can reply, Frigga begins to address her and she reaches for the remote, turning up the volume. “And Hela, if Loki is with you and if you hear this, please know that you were right. I did choose my own family over helping you when you were a teenager and that’s something I’ll have to live with for the rest of my life. We all make choices we aren’t proud of and me just blindly hoping that CPS would take care of you was one such choice. I know that you won’t ever forgive me for not standing up to Odin when I had a chance to give you a better life than the one you’ve been born into and I understand that. I will own up to my failures. But me treating you poorly doesn’t give you the right to keep Loki away from the family he grew up in. He doesn’t deserve to be kept away from us. You too made a choice when you left him with us and we were the ones who raised him. We are his family, the family he knows. If he is with you and if you return him to us, I promise you we won’t take this to court. He’s your son as much as he’s mine and you can see him whenever you want. _Please_. I just need to know that he is safe. I just … If you want what’s best for _our_ son, just let him come home. Just let me talk to him.”

Hela blows out a breath because, _damn_ , that old hag really is fucking good at this. She’s so good at it that Hela considers ringing the number displayed in a red banner under Frigga’s sorry ass face to tell her that, _yes_ , Loki is with her but, _no_ , he doesn’t want to come the fuck home because he was mistreated right under her very eyes to the point where he stabbed his own fucking brother who beat the crap out of him.

“And Nikias, if it is you who listens to me right now,” says Frigga on the television, “whatever Thor has done to upset you, I’m sure you can—”

The kid gasps and yanks the remote out of Hela’s hands, switching off the TV with an angry growl.

Hela’s eyebrows shoot up. “Who is Nikias?”

“No one,” snaps the kid but he is visibly flustered, his nostrils quaking.

“Is he your boyfriend?” asks Hela. “You are gay, right?”

The kid looks at her as if she lost her mind. “What does _that_ have to do with anything?”

“I don’t know. I guess I’m just curious about you, you know.” Hela lights her joint and takes a deep drag, drawing the smoke in and then slowly letting it out through her nose. “Because I know nothing about you and you’re legit freaking me out. Your mood swings are … terrifying. And when I say terrifying, I really mean _terrifying_. I met tons of people who creeped the fuck out of me in my life but you’re a whole new—”

“I get it,” the kid cuts in even though it becomes harder and harder to regard him as a kid when he’s acting like this whole ass, stone-cold adult. “I lose my temper sometimes, especially at night, and switch to alternate states of consciousness—”

“Alter what?” asks Hela.

“—because I experienced some rather, uh, unpleasant, one might even say traumatic things in my life, such as me almost dying because you left me alone in a car for two hours to spread your legs for drug money when I was an infant.”

Hela inhales another puff of marijuana. “Yeah, that was a shitty move, I get it. And I’m sorry if that messed you up. Even though it could also just be genetics, you know.”

“Don’t worry.” The kid— _Loki_ , _goddammit_ , _why can’t she ever bring herself to call the weirdos walking in and out of her life by their actual fucking name_?—smiles a sinister smile. “I’m not blaming you. At least, not at this very moment. What I’m trying to say is that these outbursts aren’t really … me. I mean, they’re a part of me, a truly annoying part, but _this_ is who I truly am. I am the real Loki, so to speak. Everything else is just … coping mechanisms. Don’t pay them any attention.”

Hela giggles. “Well, that’s kinda impossible when you wake up and scream your ass off in the next room.”

“I’ll try to keep it down from now on,” he says and there’s a long pause in which Hela finishes her joint and stubs it out in the ashtray.

“Can I ask you something?” the kid asks eventually, his eyes fixing on the stub.

“You can try.”

The kid looks up, his intense gaze searching for hers. “Why do you want me to save your life?”

“Why didn’t _you_ bring any money?” Hela asks back because that is a question she definitely doesn’t want to deal with. “If you truly intended to run away from home, why didn’t you bring money or credit cards or your phone or clothes or _anything_? You couldn’t even be sure I’d still be there. What’s your game? I mean, seriously?”

The kid’s lips curl into a sly grin. “I took your number, remember? If you’d taken off, I would’ve called you because, high as you were, I was sure you weren’t going to drive far last night. I mean, you surely don’t excel at self-preservation given all the shit you’re putting into your body but you’re not self-destructive enough to risk driving yourself off the road, are you? If you were, you wouldn’t care about your cancer killing you.”

 _That cunning little shit_.

“And phone and credit cards?” The kid looks at her as if she was the dumbest person on the planet. “Seriously? Why would I make sure I can be tracked?”

“But money,” Hela whines because she knows how fucking loaded they are and something inside her crumbles when she thinks of how just a bit of Odin’s money could have benefited her.

“What money?” snarls the kid. “Do you seriously want this old bastard’s money? I don’t think so.”

“Money is money, you know,” says Hela. “It doesn’t _belong_ to Odin. And if you want to live here, eat my food—”

“I don’t eat,” interrupts the kid.

An incredulous laugh slips past Hela’s lips in response to this strange assertion. “What do you mean, ‘you don’t eat’?”

“I don’t need food,” says the kid, actually fucking saying it with his whole damn chest.

“Of course you need food,” Hela objects, doubting her own sanity for the fraction of a moment but, then again, he is pretty damn skinny, probably anorexic, even if she never realized that starving was a boy’s thing too. Not that he’s much of a boy though. He’s still wearing her clothes and he’s actually fucking rocking them. She tries to shake off the thought, tries to focus. “You’ll, like, die without food.”

“I’m not like other people.”

“You’re so weird. Gosh, you’re really making me wonder if I had sex with an alien posing as a human or something.” Hela bursts out giggling because, for some reason, she finds that thought absofuckinglutely hysterical. The kid raises his eyebrows at her the way Odin always did, giving her the creeps, and she tries to stop herself but the laugh continues to build up in her throat even despite his contempt that hurts her very core. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re high,” the kid points out. “Which brings me back to the question _I_ asked _you_. Why do you want me to save your life? You’re clearly doing everything within your power to kill yourself. Why don’t you just, you know …” His voice trails off and he mimics a syringe piercing the crook of his arm.

Hela’s laughter dies because that question confronts her with everything she’s been trying not to think about since 1998 and she gulps, choking on the air she inhales. “Why are you really here? What’s in it for you?”

“You mean except for staying out of a psych ward or, even worse, _jail_?” The kid giggles. “Well, I have my reasons. But you never answer my questions and that’s really starting to piss me off.”

He narrows his eyes at her and there’s something in these eyes that scares the living shit out of her. _I stabbed Thor because he deserved it_. She knows it’s ridiculous to be afraid of a fifteen-year-old kid, _her_ fifteen-year-old kid, but she is and she doesn’t like it one bit. “I don’t actually want to die,” she concedes softly.

The kid looks surprised at that. “Why not? Being alive clearly doesn’t seem to have that many benefits.”

“I guess am afraid that death will either be too loud or too quiet and I am not ready for either of those,” Hela whispers after a while and these are the truest words she has spoken in a long, long time.

“Fair enough,” the kid says after an unnervingly long pause before he switches to the next topic so quickly that she barely has time to adjust. “Now, why did your boyfriend call you ‘El’ last night?”

“Because that’s my name,” says Hela, racking her brain about whether or not the kid actually called her ‘Hela’ at some point during the previous night but she was far too busy getting numb again to have paid attention to the fact that he might blow her cover. Her boyfriend didn’t say anything to her about it this morning though but, then again, he isn’t always straight-forward with her. He picks up on all kinds of stuff but, sometimes, he’ll only use it against her later when he’s in need of leverage. _Fuck my life_. “My, uh, official name.”

“What do you mean ‘official’?” asks the kid. “How official?”

“You were right about me living under the radar, I guess,” Hela says, her stomach giving a violent lurch because there’s so much she didn’t think about in her state of intoxication when she agreed to letting this kid drive her here the previous night and, given her track record of fucking up, it’ll probably bite her in the ass real soon. “My legal name is Elena Morrison. And if you want to stay here, you’d better not call me ‘Hela’ in front of my boyfriend or my clients or anybody else.”

The kid’s face screws up in a grimace. “Eew.”

“I meant the people I tattoo,” Hela elaborates. “I’m not a whore anymore.”

“If you say so,” says the kid. “How come you changed it?”

“I made a deal with an LAPD cop. My information on a drug ring in exchange for a new identity. I have officially been Elena Morrison since I was twenty-one,” Hela replies, leaving out the part where she can’t stop thinking of herself as Hela Davis because she never got rid of that pathetic little girl and probably never will. “That’s what I came to LA for. A fresh start.”

“A fresh start?” echoes the kid. “What fresh start? You’re still on drugs.”

Hela’s memories take her back to the stupid ass, freshly divorced redneck tourist who was drunk enough to fall for her when she approached him in the lobby of The Venetian when she was barely eighteen. Take her back to how they hit the blackjack table. To how he won ten thousand dollars and how he took her up to his suite afterwards. To how she spiked the champagne the casino staff delivered to them when they brought the money. To how she bolted with that jerk’s money after he came inside of her before passing out onto the bed, drooling like a retard. To how she hopped onto a Greyhound with his prize to escape Vegas and everything that happened to her in Sin fucking City. To how she truly believed that she’d turn her pathetic excuse of a life around with the ten gees in cash on her. Of course the money didn’t last as long as she thought it would because she blew it all on coke but, after receiving her new ID, she honestly tried to get sober. She did try to earn her money working normal jobs instead of spreading her legs for underfucked family fathers, social outcasts and dangerous weirdos giving off serial killer vibes. She did try to get it together but then she discovered that a sober life really is excruciatingly dull and far too painful.

Which is why she’s still blowing her fucking lights out every chance she gets.

“Maybe but I am _not_ a whore anymore,” Hela insists because it really did give her self-worth a tiny boost that she is now able to pay most of her bills with her tattoos; even if she still needs her creepy ass boyfriend to provide for the rest.

“That depends on the definition of prostitution and the nature of your relationship with Thanos but I don’t really care about that.” The kid chuckles, making her feel like a worm. “The important thing is, the cops won’t be able to track me down as easily as I thought they would, which is good.” He taps his chin. “My face is still all over national television though and you can’t possibly take me to a hospital or a doctor’s office to get my tissue tested the way I look right now, can you?”

She didn’t think about that. Of course she didn’t. Her befuddled brain really isn’t much use anymore these days. _Fuck everything_.

“How about you buy me some bleach for my hair?”

“Buy you some bleach for your hair?” Hela echoes. “You want me to pay for shit like that even though you didn’t bring any money despite the fact that your adoptive dad is fucking drowning in it?”

“I also need an ID,” continues the kid, ignoring her entirely. “A fake one, like yours. I’m sure you can arrange something in this department because if you don’t, well, things won’t look too good for us, will they?”

“You little piece of shit,” Hela spits.

The kid chuckles. “There’s no need to get hostile. _You_ need _me_ , not the other way around, so you’d better start thinking about how we can make this work.”

* * *

When Frigga returns to her house to get a quick shower after the press conference, a uniformed officer greets her by the door, reminding her once more that her life irrevocably changed forever. She gives a nod and tries to smile but it dies on her lips.

She draws a deep breath and shuts the front door behind her, collapsing against it, a sob tearing loose from her chest.

“Frigga?” asks Odin. “Is that you?”

Torn between surprise, relief and the urge to claw his eyes out, she answers in the affirmative and drags herself to the living room, where Odin is sitting in his armchair, his pinched face pale, his lips almost white. “Any news? How is Thor?”

“Still unconscious,” Frigga whispers, trying to banish the sight of her son in the ICU from her mind to keep herself from fainting. “Which you would know if you hadn’t … I can’t believe you just took off like that.”

Odin draws a sharp breath. “Look, I’m sorry but—”

 _But_. There is always a but, isn’t there? Well, not anymore. “I want a divorce,” Frigga blurts out.

A mixture of surprise and terror washes over Odin’s face. “Wh-what? At a time like this? Wh-why?”

He actually has to ask her why. Frigga cannot believe her own ears. After all the conversations they had about his emotional unavailability over the past weeks, after all her pleas and demands that he showed more interest in their lives, Loki’s life especially, he still has to ask her why. “Because you stopped being a husband and a father a long time ago and—”

“There wasn’t anything I could have done for either Thor or Loki this morning,” Odin cuts her off. “I finished the case and I am home now, okay? I am home and I’ll stay home.” He heaves himself to his feet, which evidently costs him considerable effort, and reaches for her arm.

“What about what you could have done for _me_?” Frigga asks softly, ignoring his promises because they never meant anything in the past and they won’t ever mean anything in the future. “I needed you and you just … left the hospital after you had a heart attack.”

“You never needed me, Frigga,” says Odin, taking her by complete surprise. “It was always the other way around.”

“You had a _heart attack_ ,” Frigga echoes, determined not to let herself be distracted by his attempts to lure her back in. “Don’t you realize what that actually means for your health? You’ll be sixty in January, Odin. You can’t just … Gosh, sometimes I feel like I have three boys to care for,” she mumbles as she thinks about that one time Thor forced himself to run a half-marathon with a swollen ankle. “You’re all so goddamn stubborn and advice-resistant, it’s exhausting!”

He reaches for her hands and squeezes them in his when a fresh flood of tears wells into her already stinging eyes. “I am sorry. I just needed to finish this.”

“And at what price?” Frigga blows out a desperate chuckle as she locks eyes with his weary gaze. Damn, how pale he is.

“I’m gonna be fine,” Odin assures her but his heavy breathing belies the certainty and authority in his tone.

“I certainly hope so because Thor is unconscious in the hospital recovering from internal bleedings and he needs you by his side and Loki is out there, either all by himself or with Hela, the fates only know which would be worse, and he’ll need you too if he makes it home safe. And if you continue to be this sorry excuse of a father who decides to defend a corrupt senator who smuggled boatloads of cocaine into this country instead of _being_ there for his family, I swear to you, you’ll lose them both!”

He actually looks surprised at this. “You worked this case too. You—”

“It’s not about the freaking _case_!” Frigga yells. “It’s about your priorities. I needed you and you weren’t there. You never were. I had to do this press conference all by myself and I … I …” She stifles a sob, trying to pull herself together.

“Hey,” whispers Odin, pulling her into a hug. “I know you’re upset. And you have every right to be. I was a fool, I know. I swear I’ll make it up to you.”

“I’m not just upset,” Frigga whispers and it takes what little energy she still possesses to jerk away from him because she is in dire need for comfort. “I can’t live like this anymore, Odin. You think it’s my responsibility to care for our boys, fine, I’ll do it. But I’ll do it without you from now on because that’s what I’ve always done.” A soft laugh rises in her throat. “And I’m done lying to myself. I am done trying to make myself believe that you’ll ever start making an effort for this family.”

Odin’s teeth are pulling at his bottom lip and, suddenly, he transforms back into the man she once fell in love with. “Frigga, please. Can’t we just talk about this?”

“No,” Frigga says, slapping away his hands. “You made your choice this morning and I made mine.” She draws a deep breath, steeling herself. “I no longer want to be your wife.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nikias has a lot of issues, one of which is that he isn't fully aware that he'll actually die if the body dies, which is also why he did the Highway stunt. He still needs to figure out how to 'actually live', if that makes sense. But more of that later. And just so you know, I'll admit that Hela is really kinda growing on me and I never thought that this would happen over the course of this fic because, as I repeatedly stated, I wanted her to be an antagonist but here we are *deep sigh* 
> 
> See you soon x


	4. Blueberry fucking pancakes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hela and Odin flaunt their stellar parenting slash husbanding skills.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, soooo, the regular weekly update thing every Sunday isn't how I operate, lol. I tried it in the past and it never works, I don't know why I try it again and again and again. I'm working on this story whenever I have some free time (which is lot, considering the time we currently live in) and I'm always working on several chapters at once because my ideas are all over the place and I'm trying to include references to things said earlier or hints for something that will be said in the future while working on them. A lot of this sequel is already written, even if it's still in draft form, so you'll get the next chapter whenever my perfectionist ass is ready to give it up.
> 
> Which is now. 
> 
> Trigger warning: Odin. (He should come with his own, don't you think?)

Odin does not take her decision well.

He explodes, or is about to anyway, but before he can yell at her in his defense, he has a second heart attack. Which is likely if the patient doesn’t rest, said the doctor, but that does not stop Frigga from blaming herself for Odin’s moronic stubbornness on top of everything else. Rationally, she knows that it wasn’t _her_ fault, that _she_ didn’t _do_ this to him because, _hell_ , Odin ignored the doctor’s advice and walked out of the hospital after thirteen hours to make a freaking summation in court, which is always nerve-racking, even when you’re healthy. But emotionally, she blames herself anyway because that’s what she learned to do.

But first, she calls nine-one-one.

 _Again_.

She fetches him some aspirin to de-clot his arteries and sits with him until the paramedics arrive and wheel him out of the house again, torn between anger and hopelessness. She watched countless tragic movies she thought to be over-dramatized but, given what happened in her own home these past hours, she begins to suspect that artificially scripted drama will never ever be a true match for real-life tragedy. That it can always be worse than what you see on-screen or read on a page. That no one is immune to their lives falling apart in the most spectacular ways imaginable to whoever controls the fate of human beings. Not that Frigga Fjörgyndottir ever believed in such powers but, with everything that happened, it’s very hard to _not_ arrive at the conclusion that someone seeks to punish her for her past wrongdoings.

There is no use to dwell on that either, though, and a part of her knows this.

Which is why, even though she doesn’t know how she keeps functioning, she takes a quick shower after the paramedics took Odin away _again_ , grabs a few of Thor’s things and heads back to the hospital to hold his hand. A part of her is vaguely aware that the only reason she keeps functioning is because she is blocking out the emotional impact. Because she is running on autopilot. If she let her emotions in, they would submerge her and she can’t allow that.

Maybe later but not now.

When she returns to Thor’s room, Tony Stark is there, slouching beside her son on the edge of the bed, murmuring to him that he’ll get through this, that he’s a fighter, that he’s strong, so much stronger than he’ll ever be. There’s pain in his words and a trace of hopelessness, and Frigga lingers by the door, reluctant to disturb the private moment.

Tony’s head snaps up anyway. She saw him a couple of times to know that he grew into quite a handsome young man himself but at this very moment, he looks like a disheveled rock star with his rumpled hair and the pair of tinted red sunglasses he’s wearing even though they’re indoors.

“Hi,” Frigga whispers, trying to force a smile but her lips won’t obey her.

“Hey,” Tony mumbles as he rises to his feet and then he walks up to her and pulls her into a tight hug that catches her by surprise because she didn’t anticipate it and because she smells booze on him.

“I’m sorry about what happened,” Tony says, pressing her close for a second and then releasing her with a nervous chuckle. “Wait, is that inappropriate to hug you?”

“Of course not,” Frigga whispers and tears well into her eyes in response to the emotional comfort he is providing despite the fact that he’s very obviously having a rough time himself. She wipes them away. “I’m sorry, I’m a mess.”

“And who wouldn’t be?” Tony asks back. “One of your sons is in a coma, the other one is out there with multiple personalities and zero self-preservation skills and your husband is a dick. Well, that last one was a bit inappropriate, I guess, but, my point is, you have a very good excuse to fall apart, Ma’am. Which is why my Mom made me bring you some food.” Tony retrieves a bag from the floor and hands it over to her. “It’s a pasta salad, nothing heavy or fancy and a little too pesto-ish, if you ask me, but she was worried you weren’t gonna eat, so.”

“Thank you but I’m not very hungry,” Frigga says, which is an understatement, because her stomach is churning after what he just said. Even if she has begun to accept that the voices are coping mechanisms and that Loki dissociates because he is overwhelmed by coping with reality, she never once thought of those voices as different personalities.

“You don’ have to eat it right now. Looks like you’re gonna be here a while.” He gulps, followed by another nervous chuckle. “Sorry. I’m not very good at this.”

Frigga draws a deep breath, trying to steal herself. “Thor told you about Loki?” she asks as she sits down on the bed. Tony nods, reaching for a chair. “What did he tell you?”

“Not much. Just that there’s one personality who has a giant beef with him and almost drove them off the road last time and now, I guess, he took the gloves off.” Frigga tries to swallow the nausea. “He also told me that Loki’s adopted and that he was abused as a child but that’s all.” He half-shrugs, an apologetic smile ghosting his lips.

“Abused?” Frigga echoes, all thoughts fleeing her mind for a moment. “Abused how?”

“He just said that their nanny—” Tony pauses when he notices the color draining from her face. “Wow, okay, he didn’t tell _you_ that. I’m sorry.”

Frigga glances at her sleeping son, her eyes lingering on the tube sticking out of his mouth. “Why wouldn’t he tell me that?” she whispers, more to herself than to Tony Stark.

“Maybe he didn’t find the right words,” Tony suggests. “Or the right moment never came. Maybe you were preoccupied with other stuff.”

“Did …” She has to clear her throat before she can speak. “Did Loki confide that to him?”

 _To him and not to me_?

“I suppose so. I mean, how else would he know, right?”

Her gaze still glued to her son, Frigga begins to understand why exactly Thor was so angry with her in the hospital. _Do you even know what happened in your absence?_ He wasn’t angry about the fact that she did go back to work. He was angry because she did go back to work and never realized that she was leaving her son in the care of someone who abused him. Tears well into her eyes and, this time, she makes no move to wipe them away.

“I’m sorry,” Tony says, his hand awkwardly landing on her arm, squeezing it for comfort. “I didn’t want to make it worse. I do that quite a lot and, uh …”

“It’s alright,” Frigga whispers, still clueless how she manages to pull herself together. “At least I have some kind of explanation now.”

 _At least I know it wasn’t Odin_.

In her state of grief, it doesn’t occur to her just how eerily disturbing that thought truly is.

* * *

Over the course of the first day, Thor’s coach and some members of his football team and classmates stop by, leaving gifts and flowers and wishing him well. Jane drops in as well but she just stares at her ex-boyfriend, her teeth pulling at her bottom lip, and then she bolts again, leaving with Frigga with the impression that, just like in the infirmary the other day, there’s more she wanted to say. Before the day is over, Thor’s hospital room speaks volumes about how many people care for him and Frigga can’t help but think about who would’ve come to Loki’s sickbed if her sons’ positions had been reversed. And, despite the fact that it isn’t a competition and shouldn’t ever be one, her heart gives a lurch every single time someone walks in to leave a gift for Thor.

The cops continue to assault her with questions about Loki after searching the cabin in Cottonwood Cove while Malibu police checked out the beach house in California and Florida police checked out their vacation home in Key West, finding no sign of him anywhere. Against her will, Frigga begins to contemplate the horrific possibility that her sweet baby killed himself. That he’s lying in a ditch somewhere far off the road, picked on by scavengers until a random hiker will find him and phone the police.

Odin tries to conceal his fury with Loki but he isn’t very good at it in his flustered state. He is devastated about Thor remaining unconscious and about the end of their marriage though and he does stay in the hospital for a few days this time, resting as he is told. He comes into Thor’s room every now and then, reaching for his hand, telling him how much he loves him and about the bright future that awaits him when he wakes up and about the past that will remain in the past once we wakes. They talk about Thor a lot but whenever Frigga brings up Loki, her soon-to-be-ex-husband grows distant and angry. He tries to change her mind about her decision after he left it alone for a few days but she tells him that the way he is talking about Loki, or rather _not_ talking about Loki, is all the confirmation she needs.

“So, what you’re saying is that you’re divorcing me because of Loki,” says Odin, his tone cold and brimful of unvoiced accusations. “Is that it? We welcomed Loki into our family and he ended up stabbing Thor. I get it, he was just a baby back then and you couldn’t have known any better but I told you he was messed up and it turns out I was right. He _stabbed_ —”

“Of course you’d say that,” Frigga cuts in. “But it wasn’t _Loki_ who did that! He is traumatized, don’t you realize that? He was abandoned and abused and—”

“So what? He _stabbed_ Thor. Thor is our _son_. Just look at him, goddammit. The two of us, we _made_ him. He’s a product of the love we once shared. He grew inside of you. You nurtured him in your womb for nine months,” Odin yells at her, driving tears to her eyes. “He is your son and—”

“Loki is our son, too,” Frigga sobs because how can Odin still not see this even after kissing Loki and holding him and pressing him close to his chest and teaching him how to swim and managing to convince him that losing your baby teeth won’t make your mouth rot?

“No,” says Odin. “I mean, yes, but not like that. How can you compare the two? How can you even think for one moment that a baby you picked up on our doorstep is more important than the baby you delivered in the hospital after nurturing him inside of you for nine fucking months?”

“I never thought—”

“Yes, you did. You’re divorcing me because I’m a bad father.” Odin chuckles grimly and she doesn’t know if his words are true or if he’s merely seeking revenge. “What you really mean though is that I’m a bad father to _Loki_ while you conveniently ignore the fact that _you_ had no problem whatsoever to neglect your own flesh and blood in favor of Loki’s screwed-up-ness! Face it, Frigga. _You_ were a bad mother to Thor. Did I divorce you over that? No, I did not, even though I could have because you sacrificed him. You sacrificed my son. He’s lying here like that because of _you_ and no matter what you’re trying to tell yourself, this is _your_ fault and _yours_ alone and you’ll have to live with it for the rest of your life!”

And then he stomps out of the room, leaving her to chew on his accusations.

* * *

As Frigga is trying to hold on to her sanity three-hundred miles to the east, the kid is driving Hela almost insane. He bleached his hair white-blond and now wears it in a messy bun on top of his head, turning himself into a completely different person. Which, she supposes, is actually a _good_ thing regarding that half of Nevada’s police force is on the lookout for him because the Sheriff probably fears that Odin will sue the department to the moon and back if they don’t bring his son home. The kid also helped himself to Hela’s credit card when she passed out on Tuesday night and went on a shopping spree, returning with leather boots, jeans, blouses, dresses, a leather vest and black contact lenses that make him look even scarier. Which is _definitely not_ a good thing. She told him he’d have to pay her back for all that crap or that she’d charge his adoptive parents for it but he just shrugged and told her to go ahead, which is what she did, starting a list of items his rich ass family owes her once this nightmare is over. He also makes her boyfriend horny whenever he drops by because that fucker has a weakness for pretty little teenage boys like him and Hela has the eerie feeling that the kid’s turning him on intentionally because he either enjoys the attention or wants to piss her off. Which is definitely _the worst thing_.

Either that or him watching her every move as if she’s a fucking animal in a fucking zoo he’s trying to study whenever he is conscious because the intensity of his gaze still freaks her the fuck out. He sat on the couch when she was tattooing the other day and asked her if he can give it a try after her client left, bugging her about why she herself isn’t tattooed and how it’s even possible for her to focus on sticking needles into people’s skin when she’s always high as she reluctantly showed him how the gun works. She told him that she doesn’t get unnecessarily high during workdays and he raised his fucking eyebrows at her in contempt.

He’s always fucking judging her because of the drugs and her past even though he’s a huge fucking mess himself. He drinks more than she does and never has to throw up. He has scars on his wrists that look like he tried to kill himself before. Apart from that, he doesn’t talk much overall, just stares into space for hours sometimes, which can’t be good. He doesn’t sleep through the night either. Not ever. And he really doesn’t touch a single bite of food for three whole days.

Until he almost passes out on Thursday morning.

Hela is sitting in her studio, drawing, trying to ignore the dull pain throbbing in her side where her kidneys or liver or whatever else is located, and he’s walking towards the bathroom when he suddenly starts swaying, groping at the wall for support. 

“Told ya.” Hela glances up from the piece she’s working on. “Our bodies always win,” she continues as he slides down the wall and slumps to the floor, burying his head in his hands. She would know. Her own body is starting to seriously revolt against her and she feels it a little bit more every day. “See? You’re just as weak and needy as everyone else. Suck it up.”

She feels a tiny bit sorry for him though and opens her drawer to look for some candy but the stash she keeps in there to help her focus when she can’t afford to get high is exhausted except for an almost-finished bag of jellybeans, which she throws in his direction. “Here. For your blood sugar.”

He grumbles in protest but eventually, he rips open the bag and starts munching on the few jellybeans that are left, gazing at her with huge eyes that suddenly look very different. It’s morning, so he hasn’t put his lenses in yet, which means they’re still green but, even so, they’re greener than they were before. Brighter. Less intense. Less creepy. More vulnerable.

“What?” asks Hela and, gazing into those eyes, she ends up asking herself for the first time since she walked up to Odin’s front door the previous Friday what might have happened if she’d indeed taken the kid to a shelter to escape her pimp as she once planned. If she’d tried to make it work.

 _Huh_.

“Nothing,” he says, his voice suddenly annoyingly squeaky.

“Now, are you gonna start eating or do I have to drop you off at the ER so that they can hook you up to a feeding tube?”

“I’m gonna start eating,” says the kid.

“Great,” says Hela but he doesn’t move an inch. He seems unsure and his teeth pull at his lip and then he shyly asks her if she can make blueberry fucking pancakes.

“Blueberry pancakes?” Hela cackles a hysterical laugh. “Does my kitchen look like a fucking diner to you? Go make yourself a sandwich or something.”

The kid looks sorely disappointed. “What about eggs?”

“You drove us here, for fuck’s sake,” Hela snaps and he flinches from her tone. “What’s stopping you from cracking a few eggs into a pan?” She shakes her head because that spoiled rich ass brat probably never learned how to fix himself his own breakfast since they have nannies and housekeepers and shit like that. Serves him right that he has to learn how the underprivileged have to carve out their miserable existence. “Help yourself because I’ve got work to do, you know. Just”—she blows out a breath—“stop getting on my goddamn nerves.”

“But I’m hungry,” he pleads, acting like a goddamn child again.

 _Loki’s state of mind kinda varies from moment to moment_.

 _Fuck everything_.

No, there’s no way she could have _ever_ made this work. Not sixteen years ago and definitely not now. The kid only lived here for a few days and she’s already in the mood for murder. If he hadn’t promised her to get his tissue tested so that she can live and if she hadn’t been so high and stupid to tell him about her new identity, giving him actual fucking leverage, she would’ve shoved him in her car and driven his annoying ass back to Vegas on Monday morning.

Hela throws her pen away. “Fine. If I make you eggs, will you leave me the fuck alone?”

He nods and she gets up, stomping into the kitchen, the kid trailing after her. The fridge is almost empty and the few eggs that are still there from the last time her boyfriend bought a carton to make whiskey sours are past their expiration date. She searches for a bowl and cracks one of the eggs into it, sniffing it. “Yep, still okay, I guess.”

She cracks the next one into the bowl and then another one, accidentally dropping the shell into it, which the kid seems to find so hilarious that he giggles. Hela draws in a breath, trying not to scream. She pours all six eggs that are left into the bowl, mixing the mess with a fork, adding a bit of salt and pepper for good measure, and then goes to look for butter. Of course she doesn’t have butter because she’s a fucking addict who doesn’t always remember to do her groceries. There’s still a bit of olive oil though and she pours that into a pan and heats it up, the kid’s suspicious eyes never leaving her. “What?” Hela snaps.

“You’re making weird eggs.”

“Yeah, well, take it or leave it,” Hela grumbles as she pours the contents of the bowl into the pan. She half-heartedly shoves the eggs from one side to the other until they look okay. She tastes them and puts the spoon back, stirring some more.

“My mama says you don’t lick a spoon and put it back into food other people are gonna eat,” the kid informs her. “That’s disgusting.”

“Well, I’m your mama now, aren’t I?” Hela blows out a breath. “You’d better stop complaining.”

“But not forever,” the kid gasps, his eyes widening in surprise. “My mama is gonna come pick me up, right?”

“Sure,” Hela giggles. “As soon as she finds out where I live, I’m sure she’ll waltz right in here.”

“Why don’t you just call her and tell her where you live?”

“Are you fucking crazy?” Hela snaps but then she stops herself because he flinches again, looking seriously distraught, and he couldn’t possibly be faking this and if he’s like that when she walks into a hospital with him, there’s no way in hell the doctors will test him. They’ll pick up the phone and call CPS without a second’s hesitation. No, she fucking needs to get him on his side when he’s like that too or else she’ll probably end up with a child abduction charge as her final act.

“Look, you’ve gotta stay with me until your brother is better,” Hela continues, astonished by how her voice adjusts to his child-like tone without any serious effort on her part. “He’s still badly hurt in the hospital and your Mom needs to take care of him, so there isn’t really any room for you right now. You understand that, right?”

The kid nods slowly.

“Good,” says Hela as she grabs a plate from one of the cupboards. “She’ll get here eventually.” She scrapes his breakfast onto the plate and puts it on the dining room table, shoving the ashtray out of reach with her elbow. She quickly cleans a few ash stains with her sleeve as he sits down, clumsily picking up the fork she holds out to him.

Hela didn’t interact with a whole lot of children in her lifetime but even so, she can recognize that the way he is trying to maneuver the eggs into his mouth is definitely not adult-like. He’s holding the fork awkwardly. He’s having difficulties to scoop up the eggs. He’s having as many difficulties to put what is on his fork into his mouth without making a fucking mess. “So, why are you acting like this right now?” Hela asks as she sits across from him, praying that he’ll turn back into the psycho freak he was before because, even if that little fuck creeped the hell out of her, it was still better than _this_. If she’d been patient enough to raise a fucking kid, she would’ve kept him after all. “What exactly are you coping with?”

“I was hungry,” says the kid.

“Of course, that makes total sense,” Hela snaps. “ _Not_.”

The kid shrugs. “It does to me.”

“Well, lucky you,” Hela fumes, stifling the urge to shake him. “This will pass though, right?”

“What?”

“You acting like”— _a retarded weirdo ass freak_ —“like _this_?” Hela clarifies because if he stays like this, she’ll certainly end up killing either herself or that messed-up little person she gave birth to before the week is over.

Freakity fucking fuck, if only she had known what she’d bring upon herself by letting him into her life.

If only she wasn’t sick and didn’t actually need his help.

If only she wasn’t such a sorry excuse of a human being who never learned how to interact with actual fucking people, let alone psychologically disturbed individuals.

“Maybe,” says the kid. “I hope not though. I like to be out.”

“Well, I really _don’t_ like it, so please make it pass ASAP,” says Hela even though a tiny part of her does kinda like it because, at least, the kid isn’t giving her the creeps this morning but, then again, the only reason they’re here in this fucked-up situation is because he agreed to help her and he can’t possibly do that when he’s acting like _that_.

The kid giggles. “That’s not how it works.”

“Yeah, well, you’re smart, aren’t you?” Hela snaps. “ _Make_ it work!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tony Stark for the win <33


	5. Out of options

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor wakes up while Hela receives devastating news. Nikias calls out to Loki.

Thor knows that his mother is there because she is holding his hand, he can feel it, and he knows that she is crying because his hand is wet from her tears. He can feel that too. Can hear her voice, even if it comes from very far away and sounds oddly distorted, her words not making much sense to him. He doesn’t know why she would be crying though because his memory is very foggy and he can’t seem to open his eyes. He can’t move either, as if someone injected lead into his bones and his limbs are now too heavy to lift them. Heavier than his muscles. 

_Muscles_.

That means something else than just that word, muscles, doesn’t it, because, sure, everyone has muscles but his muscles are different. 

This isn’t helping.

He tries to wake up, tries to move his lips, his eyelids, his fingers.

Impossible.

Need to rest.

Too tired.

Something inside him hurts, a throbbing pain, hot and dull, like a heartbeat, which doesn’t make any sense or maybe it does, he can’t tell. Frigga murmurs his name, her lips brushing against the back of his hand. He can feel her breath on his skin but he can’t respond. Can’t tell her that everything’s gonna be fine. _Why are you crying_ , _Mom_? _What happened_?

She usually doesn’t cry for him, doesn’t sit by his side to comfort him, doesn’t shush him, doesn’t whisper to him in that soft motherly tone. She only does that with Loki.

Loki.

He’s always sick, always in trouble, always hurting.

Loki needs help. Why else would she be crying?

 _Hold on_ , _brother_. _I am right here_.

 _Well_ , _almost_.

The fog inside his head clears very slowly, allowing only a few memories to take shape. Hela’s bald head. The smell of a Sunday roast wafting into his nose as he walked into the house. Loki throwing himself into his arms. The hostile, red glint in Loki’s eye. No, wait Loki’s eyes aren’t red. They’re green. Why is he remembering them in red? Something isn’t right here. He is confused. Something is muddling his thoughts.

He needs to wake up.

 _I’m not your fucking brother_ , _you fucking asshole_!

Finally, Thor’s eyelids flutter open but his surroundings remain a blur. Frigga is there, bent over him, her face a fuzzy blob. She breathes his name, squeezes his hand, whispers her thanks, her voice shaky, but Thor doesn’t know who she’s thanking. There doesn’t seem to be anyone else in the room. Maybe she’s thanking God but, then again, she never believed in God and what does it matter anyway. Frigga keeps talking to him but he can’t focus on her words, catching only a few senseless fragments of what she’s saying, learning that she’s glad … _so glad_ … _thought lost_ … _so sorry_ … _so glad_ … Thor tries to reply but there is something in his mouth, keeping him from talking, something that probably shouldn’t be there. His throat is very dry. Whatever is inside him still hurts, hurts his side.

Other people walk into the room, shadowy white creatures with blurred faces, and take the something out, touching him, talking to his Mom, their voices a distant murmur, words blending into each other, not making much sense.

 _Stabilized_ _infection_ … _vitals_ ... _neurofunction_ … _healing_ … _intact_.

A machine beeps. Someone yells in the far distance. People move things around.

He tries to blink, tries to make the room swim into focus.

Tries to wake up for real.

It’s difficult.

Frigga brings something to his lips and he becomes dimly aware that it’s a straw. He drinks, coughs, blinks some more.

“Honey, can you hear me?” whispers Frigga and he can hear in her voice that she stopped crying.

Thor nods or at least he thinks he is nodding. He’s trying to.

He blinks again, his Mom’s features sharpening at least a little. She is pale, her face pinched. Her eyes are red. She looks old. So old.

 _Loki_.

Thor tries to speak his brother’s name but it comes out as a croak.

“Shshsh, you don’t have to speak,” murmurs Frigga, her hands cupping his face, softly, comforting him. “Just rest. I’ll be here.”

Here.

He’s in a hospital, Thor realizes, because Loki stabbed him. No, not Loki. Nikias. Red-eyed Nikias.

“How … long,” Thor breathes, almost passing out from the effort.

“Twenty days,” Frigga answers, one of her hands traveling from his cheeks to the top of his head, ruffling through his hair. “But you’ll be okay. Just rest, my love. You need to rest and you’ll be okay, I promise. You pulled through the worst.”

“Loki,” rasps Thor.

“He’ll be fine,” Frigga assures him, tears creeping back into her voice. “You need to focus on yourself now, okay, honey? We’re gonna get through this.”

Thor doesn’t know what exactly ‘this’ is but his Mom’s voice in his ears and the touch of her hands are so soothing that his mind sinks back into the darkness of dreamless slumber against his will.

* * *

_No match_.

The kid’s tissue is not a match, the doctor informs her, an apologetic expression stamped across his sorry ass rat face. Well, Robin’s tissue, says he, because that’s the name on the adult ID that her boyfriend brought home the day the kid passed out during the first week, which she thinks kinda fitting because Robin is both a masculine and a female given name and the kid didn’t actually grow into either a boy or a girl.

He grew up into this weird genderless person.

Loki Odinson.

Robin Morrison.

Son.

Her son, who doesn’t look like a son.

Her son, whose tissue isn’t a match for hers even though he grew inside her body causing her lots of pain, cravings and nausea, and who’s fucking walking around with her fucking DNA in his system right now, trampling all over her life, forcing her to wear a headscarf in public because her (not very flattering) mugshot has been all over the news for two weeks straight.

“How is that even possible?” Hela gasps, forcing herself to focus on the conversation she needs to have with that snot-nosed prick.

“I told you, only about thirty percent of people who need a transplant can find an HLA-matched donor in their immediate family,” says the doctor and her first instinct is to call him a liar because if he’d told her that, if she’d _known_ that, she wouldn’t have wasted the previous weeks of her life on a thirty percent chance. Wouldn’t have set foot in Odin’s house again, facing that old bastard. Wouldn’t have walked right back into her past, waking up old demons that make her lose control over the drugs again.

But maybe he did tell her and she just didn’t want to hear it.

Maybe she just blocked it out the same way she blocked out the suspicious glare that fucker shot her when she walked in there with the kid, claiming that she finally tracked down the son her husband took from her when he made a bolt overnight sixteen years ago.

 _Medical confidentiality for the win_.

“So, what are my options?” Hela brings herself to ask even though she’s pretty damn sure what he’s gonna say. He said it a million times, making her feel like the pathetic worm that she is.

“We’re out of options. We always were, pretty much from the beginning.” The doctor sighs, looking at her as if she was dense. “Miss Morrison, I don’t know how many times I’ll have to tell you that but you aren’t dying because you have cancer. You could be in remission right now if you were a healthy thirty-two-year-old. If you’d stopped abusing drugs when I first told you to.”

She gulps, mentally willing him to shut up.

“You are dying because you never got sober. Your organs are starting to give up and I’m sure you are in a lot of pain on a daily basis and if you don’t stop, you’ll die. It’s not going to be long now.”

She draws a trembling breath.

“Maybe a few months. Maybe just a few weeks if you continue like this,” he says and a part of her knows that he’s right because she’s starting to feel her organs, a constant, dull pain in her side, and she feels nauseous and dizzy almost all the time and she has trouble breathing, trouble concentrating, trouble doing pretty much anything. She has to puke all the time and whenever she does, her mouth feels like it’s kinda dissolving and the taste of vomit and blood lingers for hours no matter how thoroughly she brushes her teeth. “For a while, it seemed like you were slowing down but your last blood test results were a nightmare. Cocaine, marijuana, crack. All the pain medication you are abusing. That is why your hand will not stop twitching. That is why your pupils are dilated. That is why your speech is slurred.”

“My speech isn’t slurred,” Hela protests because if it were, she’d hear it, right?

“You might be able to fool yourself but you can’t fool me. I know that you’re high right now and I’d be surprised if you were still be able to tattoo in your current state, you know, with your hands shaking like that.”

“I’m fine,” Hela snaps because there’s no need for that sonofabitch to know that the kid has displayed quite a natural talent for tattooing and did some of her easy jobs for her this past week so that she’d earn at least a little money. “I might be high but I’m doing okay.”

“Doing okay?” A desperate chuckle slips past his lips. “What does that even mean to you, Miss Morrison?”

“What’s it to you?” Hela snaps.

“What’s it to _me_?” echoes the doctor. “You’ve been coming to me for several months now and I wanted to help you at first, I really wanted to, but you’ve been careless and uncooperative pretty much from the beginning and I will not lie to you. It wouldn’t sit right with me if you received a bone marrow donation or a kidney or a liver transplant instead of someone who actually wants to live and treats their body with respect.”

A cackle bursts out of her. “So, I deserve to die just because I’m an addict? Well, thank you.”

“You don’t deserve to die,” says the doctor. “Nobody does. But it’s not your cancer that’s killing you. _You_ are killing yourself, Miss Morrison. You’ve been committing slow-motion suicide for years and now, unfortunately, you’ve reached the point of no return. Why can’t you see that? Why can’t you take responsibility for what you did to your body?” He pauses and it’s the kind of pause that raises the hair on Hela’s arms. “Look, let me help you get into rehab and maybe—”

Hela snorts out a laugh. “I won’t be going to rehab! Forget it!”

The doctor cocks his eyebrows, his piercing gaze searching for her fleeing eyes. “You’d seriously rather die than go to rehab?” He looks seriously concerned and taken aback at the same time. “Even now?”

“Well,” Hela sighs. “Let’s put it that way: If I don’t have that much time left anyway, I’d rather spend what little I have left getting as high as I can every single day instead of miserably dying sober in some lame ass treatment facility!”

“If that’s your choice, that’s your choice but I’m warning you. You’ll be experiencing serious—”

“Fuck you,” Hela snaps and then she turns around and stomps out of the doctor’s office, cursing herself and everything else, bristling at his words.

* * *

The kid is sitting at the table when she returns to her apartment, staring out of the window as he sometimes does. Well, often does. “Guess what? Your tissue isn’t a match,” Hela informs him bluntly. “Which translates to you no longer being able to fucking blackmail me into staying here and driving me crazy.”

He needs a moment to reply. “Are you kicking me out?”

“Duh,” Hela replies. “Your mommy is out there, crying her eyes out over you, so let me just take you back to where you belong.”

 _Let me die in peace_.

The kid smirks. “You haven’t answered my question.”

“We made a deal, remember?” Hela chuckles grimly. “Your help in return for me letting you stay here. Well, you can’t help me, so you can’t stay.”

He looks taken aback for a second but quickly composes himself. “Why not?”

“Because you’re annoying the shit out of me and you’re expensive,” Hela snaps because the doctor’s words never reached her like they did today and, if there’s no more hope, she might as well use her last weeks to get as high as she can every fucking minute of the time she has left. Hell, maybe she’ll even OD and beat death to it, ending her sorry ass life on her own terms. But, then again, there is a tiny part of her she wasn’t aware of until now, a tiny part that doesn’t want to let him go because, fucked-up as he is, they did develop a strange sort of connection during the time he spent with her. “If you want to stay, you’ll have to work for it.”

“I’ve been doing some of your work for you already, haven’t I?”

“Yeah, well, tattooing is the easy part. Everyone can do that with enough practice.” Hela pretends to think. “The thousand-dollar question is: Can you draw?”

The kid looks slightly insecure for a moment. “I guess.”

“Great. Because I have this client who requested a Dia de Los Muertos kind of motive with a broken heart and skulls and dancing skeletons and I have no fucking inspiration, so draw me something. Several different somethings. If they’re any good, I might reconsider.”

“And if not?”

“You’ll go home.”

The kid nods, looking at her, apparently waiting for something more. “Oh, you mean, like, right now?”

“Yeah. I need to take a nap,” Hela says because, as much as she hates it, the doctor was right and she is feeling crappier every day. “I expect your results in two hours. Pens and paper are in the studio.”

“Okay,” he says reluctantly and Hela crashes into her bed a minute later, diving face down into the pillows, wondering why she didn’t just kick him the hell out because, connection or not, his presence won’t ever _not_ shatter her nerves at any given moment.

* * *

Someone is calling out to him and Loki doesn’t appreciate that in the least because he’s been safe ever since he whited out again. Truly safe. He isn’t in some weird jungle. Not that he actually remembers why it’s good to not be in a jungle because the jungle in the back of his mind is just a hazy thought, the shadow of a shadow of a memory really, and it doesn’t matter because, right now, he’s just _there_. He’s just floating in space, floating, yes, _you’ll float too_ , he dimly remembers, not knowing what it means because he is surrounded by warmth and the sound of a steady beating heart, not thinking much, not thinking at all most of the time, and that’s good and he doesn’t ever want to go back. He doesn’t even know where he doesn’t want to go back to because his brain isn’t functioning properly but that is how it’s supposed to be. He is safe where he is right now. He is well. He is safe. He is protected. Nobody can harm him.

Finally, he is safe.

For the first time since … ever.

And that’s all that matters.

But someone is calling out to him, trying to draw him out.

He tries to shut the voice out but it’s pretty damn persistent, forcing him to come closer.

A little, just a little, Loki tells himself, because he can’t give this place up. He can’t leave this place. He’ll die if he does. He knows it. There is nothing out there for him.

Nothing but this adamant voice.

As he draws closer, becoming slightly more conscious, Loki realizes that the voice calling out to him should mean something to him, realizes that he is connected to it in some way, but he doesn’t want to know more. He doesn’t need to know more because the voice commands him to do a simple task, a task he can do without much thinking. It wants him to draw. He can draw, that much Loki knows, even if he doesn’t know much else. He doesn’t have to be conscious for that. He does as he is told and then he retreats again because the safety of that place is all he needs and whatever else is out there, it has nothing to do with him.

He doesn’t want anything to do with it either.

He just wants to float in that warm, safe space for all eternity.

* * *

When her alarm rings and her eyes open, Hela is somewhat disappointed that she didn’t die in her sleep after what the doctor said.

 _Death_.

Such a fascinating and intriguing concept, yet so scary at the same time.

Hela thought about dying a lot when she was a little girl and she thought about it even more when she was living on the streets, stumbling from one degrading encounter to the next, too high to care but not high enough to actually fucking seriously kill herself. She overdosed four times in the last ten years and every time, they brought her back. As if something was holding her here. She never knew what it was and, as she struggles out of bed, trying to pull herself together, she curses whatever it was that made her come back each time only to condemn her to die of cancer now. It’s hardly fair but, then again, she could just OD again. Maybe it’d even work this time around, with her body being as weak as it is.

 _You’re not self-destructive enough to risk driving yourself off the road_ , _are you_? _If you were_ , _you wouldn’t care about your cancer killing you_.

 _Fuck everything_.

No, she’s still holding on to … something.

At least the kid presents her with a few drafts that are moderately impressive when she walks into her studio, which is one thing less to worry about.

“Nice,” Hela whistles. “So, that’s about 700 for the tat. If we split it, that’s 350 for you and buys you, uh, I’d say about another month.”

His creepy black eyes light up. “Will I get the money?”

“Hell, no.” Hela laughs. “That’s living expenses and compensation for having to endure your nightly meltdowns combined. If you want real money for yourself, you’ll have to get a real job.”

“You mean like spreading my legs for strangers?” The kid flashes her a nasty grin and she wonders if she’s really slurring her words all the time but, of course, she’s too damn proud to ask him. “Or working for Thanos? I’m sure he’ll find something to—”

“No,” Hela gasps, her chest going eerily tight at the thought. “You don’t get involved in his shit, you hear me?”

“It’s kinda hard to _not_ get involved in his shit when he shows up here all the time.” A smirk appears on his lips. “What is your business with him anyway?”

“That’s none of yours.”

“I guess I’m finally curious enough about you to ask, you know,” the kid says, repeating the words she said to him when he arrived about three weeks ago. “You seem to be in some sort of relationship with him but you clearly don’t love him. You clearly don’t love anyone, least of all yourself. If I were to make a guess, I’d say you’re even afraid of him. So, what’s in it for you?”

“Isn’t that obvious?” Hela grumbles.

“Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll?” The kid chuckles. “Although I don’t see much rock ‘n’ rolling happening in this place. It rather feels like something’s dying. No pun intended.”

“Shut up and stay the hell away from my boyfriend,” Hela snaps because she knows what he is capable of and, _holy shit_ , she can’t even imagine the hell Frigga will rain down on her if she lives long enough for Odin’s bitch to learn what exactly Hela got her son involved in.

“If you say so, _Mom_ ,” the kid mocks her and Hela’s hand itches to smack him across the face. Maybe Thor had a good reason to beat the shit out of him after all.

* * *

“Elena?”

“What?” Hela mumbles drowsily. She just drifted off into sleep minutes ago, lulled in by the perfect numbing flush, and now the kid’s gonna ruin it, ruin her sleep. Ruining everything, as always. _Damn that little brat_. Reluctantly, she opens one eye and sees him standing in the doorway in a blur, hugging the stupid ass, half-his-size stuffed elephant that he absolutely had to have when they walked past a toy store after the doctors tested him and he switched back to toddler mode without warning in the middle of the street. That surely was weird because one second, she was talking to him, arguing with him, really, because he was acting like the condescending asshole that he is, and the next second he was gone. She shouted out to him, frantically calling his name before a random pedestrian informed her that the kid had walked into the toy store. She took after him and when she found him, he was hugging that stupid animal, telling her that he must take it home. That George needed to come home with them. She told him to forget it, tried to yank the stuffed animal out of his arms. He started whimpering. People started staring, whispering; basically leaving her no choice but to give in. She still can’t believe that she wasted thirty-five dollars on such a useless piece of crap just because the kid made puppy eyes at her. Damn that childish creature he turns into randomly, especially now that all she wants is to sleep and forget that she ever existed.

“Can I sleep in your bed?” he asks in that annoying high-pitched voice that makes her ears bleed even on good days.

“No.”

The kid comes closer anyway, climbing into her bed.

She gives him a little shove. “Go away.”

He whimpers. “Please.”

“No.”

“But you said you’re my mama now,” says the kid, snuggling up to her. “So you must give me a hug.”

Hela sighs in defeat. “Why can’t you just let me sleep one night?”

“Because I’m lonely and I’m scared.” He remains silent for a beat. “You’re lonely too, aren’t you?”

“No,” Hela grumbles. “Now, go to sleep before I lose my mind.”

“I think you need a hug too,” says the kid, his arms looping around her neck while still holding the fucking elephant.

“Stop it,” Hela hisses, his embrace almost setting her skin on fire.

“Your body is shaking,” says the kid. “It’s, like, twitching.”

“I know,” mumbles Hela. “It’s because I’m sick.” _Sick as in having a cocktail of crack, coke and pain meds in my system that could stop my heart any time now_.

The kid doesn’t respond to her with words, just hugs her tighter, and Hela half-heartedly pats his arm so that he’ll leave her in peace. “I hope you get well soon.”

“Yeah, just go back to sleep, okay?” Hela whispers and, miraculously, he does, his skinny arms still looped around her neck, and, for the first time since they arrived here, she doesn’t have the heart to push him away.

 _Let me help you get into rehab and maybe_ …

No.

Hell, no.

Her boyfriend wouldn’t like that. If she no longer needed his drugs and his money, she’d no longer need him and he doesn’t particularly appreciate not being needed. They’ve been there before. Drifting out of consciousness, the last thing Hela thinks about is the crunchy noise her nose made when he broke it the first time she bought powder from someone else.


	6. So, you like pain?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We learn that Hela is not actually in a relationship with Thanos, no, she is in a relationship with denial and has been for a very long time. She loves denial, and denial loves her. They're inseparable. Nikias discovers that he isn't invincible, that he has emotions too, and, of course, that has consequences for Loki.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a fine line between putting trigger warnings at the beginning of a chapter and spoiling something that's gonna happen and I haven't yet mastered balancing that line. So, if you think you might be easily triggered by anything mental illness-related, please double-check the trigger warnings and the tags because some of them apply to this chapter. 
> 
> That said, special thanks goes to Black Feather for enlightening me about the fact that cardiac arrest and heart attack aren't actually synonyms after so many years of believing that a heart attack means that the heart actually stops beating. Naturally, I never stopped to wonder for one second how my grandmother could live after having a heart attack because I just assumed that the heart could go into arrest for quite some time. (Probably shouldn't have watched Flatliners as a kid, lol.) In any case, Odin had two heart attacks and was, consequently, never dead at any point in this or the prequel. Which is why I changed it. Thank you, again x
> 
> I put a tw for Thanos here though.

A few nights later, Hela is standing bent over the sink of her kitchenette, half-heartedly scrubbing more than a week’s worth of sticky dishes with a soggy sponge, cursing her fucking doctor for making her cut back on the coke and the crack and the booze. Cursing him because sticking solely to her prescribed pain meds and the occasional spliff is so damn lame that she wonders why the hell she’s doing this to herself. Maybe because she doesn’t wanna go toes up sooner than expected but, then again, she still has to throw up every day, still feels that dull pain in her side, which means that she’s probably still dying, so what’s the point? Life fucks you over no matter whether or not you’re actually trying, so seeing the benefits of her sacrifice is next to impossible.

She thinks about the gin in the fridge, thinks about drinking herself into oblivion.

But then she thinks about the kid, who has been even more on edge than usual the past few days and even more distraught. Angrier too, if that’s even possible. Something is going through is mind, she can tell, but when she forced herself to ask him about what was wrong, he just shrugged and stared, brooding, shutting her out, drinking, smoking, sulking.

When her boyfriend walks in later, well, _strides in_ , because that’s what he does, he doesn’t simply walk like normal people do, _no_ , he commands attention with every step and breath he takes, Hela has no clue that she’s about to learn the source of the kid’s distress.

He greets her with a possessive kiss, cupping her chin with a little more force than necessary before sticking his tongue into her mouth. “I missed you.”

 _No_ , _you didn’t and I didn’t miss you either_ , thinks Hela because minus the drugs, he’s basically useless to her. Well, not entirely, but, still, she wonders briefly if there’s a way she could ask him for his key back without enraging him but she’s too tired and too worn out to think straight. But then again, he took it astonishingly well—meaning he just laughed in her face, telling her that she won’t last a week—when she told him that she needed to go easy on the dope from now on, so maybe she’ll find a way to reason with him about the key.

“I have something for you,” he says with a creepy grin on his lips, putting a dark-blue envelope on the counter.

Hela’s eyebrows hike up. “What is that?”

“Open it.”

Reluctantly, Hela dries her hands on the soaked towel and opens the envelope. “What the …” There’s cash in there, a couple of hundreds, and her stomach gives a violent lurch because her boyfriend is fucking smirking like a shark. “Where does that come from?”

“Loki came to me, asking me for a job.”

“No.” Hela’s throat dries up as she thinks about how the kid mocked her the other day.

 _You’ll have to get a real job_.

 _You mean like working for Thanos_?

 _You don’t get involved in his shit_ , _you hear me_? _You stay the hell away from my boyfriend_.

 _If you say so_ , _Mom_.

There was so much content in his tone, so much disdain, so much … He did it just to spite her, Hela knows that. _Fuck_ , he did it to hold a mirror up to her, trying to get it through to her what a fucked-up life she’s living as if she wasn’t aware of that in a far, far corner of her mind.

“So, I took some photos of him,” says her boyfriend, making her aching organs ache and shrivel some more.

Hela gulps. “What photos?”

“Harmless photos,” he assures her even though that self-satisfied smile is still plucking at his lips. “Naked from the waist up.”

“Show me,” Hela brings herself to say even though she isn’t sure she can stomach the sight without knocking back a few drinks first.

He pulls out his phone, swipes the screen a few times and holds the display out to her. By all means, the photos look harmless enough in comparison to … all the other shit he’s capable of. The kid is posing in blue jeans, his skinny torso bare, injuries photoshopped away, his hair down in some of them and twisted into a lazy bun in others. They _are_ harmless, she tries to tell herself because she doesn’t want to deal with this shit right now, but, then again, she knows they’re not _harmless_ because, despite behaving like an adult most of the time and glancing lasciviously into the camera with a challenging half-smirk, he is still a minor. Because he looks scared in some of the photos, a vulnerable expression in his widened eyes that gives her the fucking creeps. “I _told_ you he was off limits,” Hela shouts. “How could you do that?”

“He came to me,” the bastard defends himself. “I didn’t do this against his will.”

Hela draws a breath because the way the kid’s been acting lately makes it clear that her boyfriend did _something_ that wasn’t part of the plan. Or maybe he just underestimated the shame and guilt of feeling grimy and filthy and absolutely worthless after having been treated like nothing more than a piece of meat.

“I told you we could make tons of cash off of him.” He jerks his head towards the envelope. “If people are paying that much for a photo, can you imagine what they’d be willing to pay for—”

“No!” Hela cuts in, shoving him away. “Stop talking! You’ll leave him the fuck alone, you hear me?”

“Come on,” he murmurs, cupping her chin again. “You need the money, don’t you?”

“Of course I do but …” Hela draws a sharp breath, trying to clear her thoughts, which isn’t easy because all she can think of is Frigga fucking Fjörgyndottir losing her shit and having the cops throw her sorry ass straight into a jail cell.

“He can still help you, you know.”

“No,” Hela whispers because this isn’t about her and the cash she needs. The bastard started leering at the kid the minute they walked into the apartment about a month ago. She knew he wanted him the minute he laid eyes on him. “Not like this. I won’t pimp out my own kid! Who the fuck do you think I am?”

“Oh, I don’t need to think. I know who you are, El.” He chuckles and there is contempt dripping from his tone, contempt glinting in his eyes. So much contempt, so much ridicule. “You don’t have a conscience. You never did.”

“You will not touch him anymore,” Hela bristles. “If he asks you for a job one more time, you’ll tell him to go to hell!”

He chuckles again because they both know damn well that she never had scruples about throwing other people to the wolves. Other minors. But the kid isn’t other people. The kid is _her_ kid and the more semi-sober time she spends with him, the more he breaches her emotional defenses.

“Alright,” he relents, stroking her cheek, his fingers traveling across her skin until they reach the back of her ear, rubbing the spot behind them. “If you say so.”

Hela groans involuntarily and that noise is all he needs to hear. He leans down for a kiss, shoving his tongue into her mouth again. She doesn’t want to kiss him although she does and she hates herself for wanting to kiss him. She hates her pussy even more for reacting to his touch with a wet, hot lurch because he’s already all over her, his hands on her hips, her ass, the small of her back, and she leans into the touch because she’s been carrying around a truckload of daddy issues ever since she was eight years old. He knows this of course and he’s shamelessly exploiting it right now as he always does, murmuring, “You’re tense because you’re in withdrawal. Why don’t you let me ease some of that tension?”

Despite the fact that she itches to slap him for what he did to the kid, her body responds instantly.

 _Fuck everything_.

As if on cue, the kid walks into the kitchen, a disgusted look on his face. “Get a room.”

“We’re about to,” chuckles her boyfriend as he ushers her out of the kitchen and Hela is torn between disgust and desire, asking herself how sick a person could be to fuck a man who took nudes of their own fucking child.

* * *

Loki is still floating when the voice calls out to him again. It did want him every now and then, requesting him to draw some stuff, which was fine because Loki never dared to approach farther than he needed to in order to complete the task, but now the voice sounds more urgent and he doesn’t like that at all. Mostly because he doesn’t understand what’s happening to him, to his brain, and as soon as he starts thinking about his brain, he knows that he’s already too conscious again. That he’s already leaving his safe place because he never once thought about his brain before because his brain is the enemy, isn’t it, _yes_ , it is, his brain is the reason he was safely tucked up here for however long it lasted but now it’s over.

He doesn’t want it to be over though.

He curls up into a ball, which is easy in this space, trying to ignore the voice, because he can tell that if he follows the voice all the way, if he does something more than just draw in a barely conscious state, he’ll have to leave this place for good. He knows it. He doesn’t know how or why, he just knows. He knows too that he is already leaving. That he’s already being pulled out.

Because the voice is demanding, adamant.

He has to follow it.

He has to give this up. The safety. The protection. The shelter.

He doesn’t want to but he has no choice but to go back.

Back to Nikias.

That’s the voice’s name, isn’t it, _oh yes_ , and as he draws closer to the outside world again—the place he just thought of as a vague ‘back there’ he didn’t want to go back to but couldn’t identify earlier—Loki’s memories come back. School, The Voices, his parents, Thor.

 _Thor_ …

Loki tries to bolt but he’s already consciousnesses-converging kind of close to Nikias and he already sees Nikias going to a fridge, putting some ice cubes into a glass before fetching a bottle of gin.

No, for better or for worse, Loki is back in reality. Back in the apartment that belongs to his birthmother. He lost his safe space. He can think again, feel again, remember again. And what he feels is discomfort because Nikias, despite lecturing him about weakness for such a long time, is distraught, confused, violated.

“You fucking coward,” grumbles Nikias when he notices Loki’s consciousness approaching his as he walks out to the balcony with a drink in one hand and a bottle of gin in the other hand. “Where have you been all this time? That wasn’t the fucking plan!”

“Plans change,” replies Loki.

“This was supposed to be _your_ lesson and you just fucked off!” Nikias snarls at him. “You’re fucking weak! _You_ were supposed to be here, not Leah! She had to experience … You fucking coward! You pathetic little bitch!”

“What are you even talking about?” Loki gasps but then the rest of his memories come back, slamming into him with the force of a hurricane. “You’re the one that brought us here. Y-you …” The words get stuck in his throat, pain washing over him, hollowing him out. _You stabbed your own brother_. “Y-you killed Thor.”

“I didn’t kill your shithead brother, okay,” grumbles Nikias, knocking back his drink. “He’s recovering in the hospital, so stop whining.”

A weight lifts from Loki’s chest. “Then we just go back. I’m sure there’s—”

“The hell we are.”

“We have a good defense. I mean, we’re one of the more glaringly examples of legal insani—Hey, what the hell? Put that down,” Loki hisses because Nikias is lighting a fucking cigarette. “You don’t get to poison my body with—”

“Our body,” says Nikias as he takes a long hit and Loki can feel the smoke stream into his lungs. _Yuck_.

“We need to go back,” Loki says again because he can still feel Nikias’s distress, his outrage, his pain. “Whatever happened, you’re clearly—”

“Just shut up,” Nikias cuts him off, knocking back another drink. “If you don’t end up in jail, you’ll end up in a psych ward and you can’t want that. _I_ don’t want that.”

“What h-happened to you?” Loki stammers because he’s never seen Nikias this distraught. “Did Hela do something?”

“Nothing. Just shut up.” Nikias pours another drink down his throat.

“Come on, what happened?” Loki repeats. “Just tell me.”

“Just be quiet.”

“And how does that feel?” Loki gloats. “To have an irritating voice constantly babble into your ear? It sucks, doesn’t it? Well, you never shut up and let me just show you how that felt. What happened?”

“Please,” begs Nikias and the tone of his voice is eerily vulnerable. He knocks back another drink and, then, suddenly he’s gone and Loki finds himself on the balcony of Hela’s apartment, his hands still holding the cigarette Nikias lit a few moments before. He furiously stubs it out, feeling the soothing warmth of the gin buzz inside of him where there was the floating space’s warmth outside of him before. He pours himself another glass and walks into the apartment with it, trying to take it all in a second time.

It still looks as he remembers it. Kitchenette, dining table, TV, couch.

Loki slumps onto the couch, reaching for the remote, and the TV informs him that it’s the twenty-sixth of October. It takes a moment before Loki realizes what that means. He spent almost a whole month in LA and no one came for him. They just accepted that he’s gone and moved on, and why the hell should they come for him? He’s just a pathetic waste of space, a wayward deranged little psycho freak. They are probably relieved that he isn’t in their lives anymore.

He swallows the pain down with the gin, kinda wishing it was scotch, and then opens YouTube nonetheless, typing in his name, searching for news videos, for a message.

Frigga sent him quite a few.

Loki gulps and clicks on the first link. He listens to his mother’s voice and a part of him shrivels and dies when he hears her speak about how much she wants him to come home and that’s it not his fault. That Thor will be okay, which means that he isn’t, not right now, and he isn’t speaking to him, there’s no message from Thor for him or from his Dad, which means that Thor is either unconscious or mad at him and how couldn’t he mad when it’s all Loki’s fault because he let Nikias take over? He let Nikias’s hate seep into him like venom for months, poisoning his thoughts, destroying his relationship with his brother. Thor was always there for him, _always_ , he tried and tried and tried, he hugged him and held him and made it all better and he gave him so much strength and so much love and Loki pushed him away and spit insults into his face and let Nikias fucking stab him.

Thor can’t play football anymore right now and there’s no way in hell he’d ever forgive Loki for taking his passion away from him. How could Loki ever go back and look his brother in the eye after what he did? How could they ever love him again? Frigga is saying that she loves him, yes, but she’s probably just saying that to lure him back home. To make sure he’ll be put in a psych ward, safely locked up like the fucking messed-up little psycho that he is. They’ll strap him to a bed and pump him full of drugs and Odin will look at him and he’ll have THAT look in his eyes and he’ll say that Loki isn’t is son anymore, not after what he did to Thor, and he’ll disown him and throw him out of the family like he did with Hela, and Thor won’t want to spend time with him anymore after what he did because he’ll always know that Nikias will come out again, trying to hurt him, and, besides, Thor loves Leah more than he loves Loki anyway, she’s probably the child Frigga wants back, not him, no, not _Loki_ , because Loki hurt the baby she truly gave birth to, and they certainly don’t want Nikias back because if Nikias ever sets foot in that house again, he’ll probably hurt someone else and Loki can’t let that happen.

No, he has to stay here.

If he wants to protect Frigga and Thor, he has to stay with Hela and stay out of their goddamn lives. He brought them nothing but trouble, nothing but craziness and tears and heartbreak, and Thor deserves more than that. Frigga does too.

He can’t go back.

He belongs here, with his own mother.

Frigga belongs to Thor.

He doesn’t deserve her anymore after what he did.

A void yawning open inside of him, Loki puts the remote down and walks to the bathroom. It vaguely occurs to him that he’s gonna be sixteen in a few days and that there’s gonna be no party, no friends, no family, because _this_ is where he belongs, with the woman who fucked people for money and squeezed him out of her pussy in a fucking bar and who is still fucking someone for money right at this very moment, if the noise coming from her bedroom is any indication.

Loki closes the door behind him, nausea and panic washing over him when he catches a glance of himself in the mirror and sees that his black hair and green eyes are gone. _What the fuck_? Nikias didn’t only use his hands to stab Thor, _no_ , the fucking cretin stole Loki’s entire body and made it his. He took everything and destroyed it. Loki staggers forward, all thoughts fleeing his mind, and he opens the bathroom cabinets and drawers on impulse, looking for a razor blade with shaking hands.

He doesn’t find one like the ones he uses, just a fucking Venus girl razor with four tiny blades in the plastic razor head but if that’s all Hela possesses, it’ll have to do. Loki searches for scissors, his heart beating in his chest, thundering in his ears, his sweaty hands trembling with anticipation as he cuts away the plastic until, finally, the blades tumble onto the sink. He picks one up and rolls up his sleeve. The stitches he got a few weeks ago are gone and his entire arm is healed.

There are no fresh wounds anymore, just dark scars.

There is _a lot of_ skin left to cut into, just as there was in the beginning, and the sight floods him with relief and gratitude. Makes him smile.

Loki sinks to the floor and tears into his flesh, time slowing to a stop around him as his skin splits open and releases the first drops of blood that spill out, running down his arm. He doesn’t wait for the first cut to bleed, doesn’t watch the blood as he sometimes does. He just slashes into his arm again and again and again until his vision blurs a little and every thought has fled his mind and everything that happened, everything he ruined, no longer matters.

What matters is the blade tearing his flesh open.

What matters is that he can rid the world of pathetic little Loki crazy ass weirdo freak Odinson once and for all.

Odinson no more.

Nobody, really.

Just a pathetic little fuck-up who needs to die.

He’ll savor it, the last cutting, and then he’ll split his artery open and it’ll be all over.

Time doesn’t matter anymore.

Nothing matters.

Except for this.

Except for the blood.

“What the freaking hell?!” Hela yells as she suddenly stomps into the bathroom, looking like a ghost, her jaw gaping open when she sees all the blood. All that lovely blood.

Loki draws a deep breath. “Go away. I need some space.”

“Space?! You don’t need some fucking _space_! You need a lifetime of therapy!”

“Hey, what’s going on in here?” comes a deep voice and Loki’s brain needs a moment to remember the name of the guy who strides into the bathroom after Hela in a pair of purple boxers.

Thanos.

By the looks of it, they really are in some sort of relationship although, judged by his appearance, Thanos could still be a drug dealer or a club owner or a pimp or a gangster boss or a bouncer. Definitely someone who possesses power and learned how to assert authority. Who knows what he wants and how to get whatever it is he wants.

“Make him stop,” Hela snaps at Thanos.

“No,” Loki whispers. “Just leave me alone.”

Thanos drops to his knees and grabs his wrist in his huge meaty fingers. “Drop it, Loki.”

“No,” Loki whispers, shuddering because his name coming out of that guy’s mouth sounds so wrong and makes him feel even more nauseous. He holds onto the blade, feels it cutting into his palm. “I need this.”

“You don’t need _shit_ ,” Hela spits.

Thanos pries his fingers open and Loki struggles against him, which is basically impossible given his size, isn’t it, _oh yes_ , it is, because Thanos just slaps him across the face so hard that Loki’s head slams into the shower wall and his grip slackens in surprise, allowing Thanos to take the blade away from him.

“No,” Loki howls.

Thanos gives the blade to Hela, who takes it and the others too, dumping them into the toilet and flushing them down, cursing under her breath.

“You’ll clean that up,” she warns Loki.

“Why don’t you get a first aid kit?” Thanos asks Hela.

“What first aid kit?” Hela snaps at him, her tone bordering on hysteria. “Do I look like I have a fucking first aid kit lying around somewhere? Have you ever _seen_ a first fucking aid kit lying around here somewhere?” She cackles. “This is too fucking much. I need to … I need something.” Her voice breaks. “Please, I need some fucking coke!”

“Get the first aid kit out of your car and I’ll give you something,” Thanos promises her and she storms out of the room immediately.

Which means that he is her drug dealer after all. _What a surprise_.

“So, you like pain?” Thanos asks as he retrieves a towel, holding it under the sink.

Loki merely shrugs in response because that guy still gives him the freaking creeps and because it’s not the pain itself that he likes. It’s the escape the pain provides. “What do you think?” he whispers.

“I think I might have a solution for you,” Thanos says with an eerie predator grin stealing over his lips as he wraps the wet towel around Loki’s arm.

“I doubt it,” Loki murmurs but despite the danger and the creepiness wafting off that guy, there’s something alluring in the man’s eyes. Something like a promise. Something that makes Loki less afraid of him than he was on the sidewalk, than he was moments ago.

As Thanos cleans up his wounds, bandaging his arm with almost fatherly concern while Hela snorts herself into oblivion on her living room couch, Loki can’t help but think about all the kinds of punishment for his unwanted existence lurking in that man’s twisted mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooo, in case you were wondering, Nikias doesn't cut himself and Loki doesn't starve himself. They both have their own individual issues, even if they both rely on booze to deal with them.


	7. Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thanos was right. Hela didn't last a week. She relapsed. Badly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Addiction is ugly. Truly, truly ugly. Beware. 
> 
> A trigger warning for all the whumpy stuff lurking in the abyss of my mind.

Loki dreams of pain and punishment that night, subconsciously exploring Thanos’s mind, exploring what he might be capable of, what he might have done to other people, what he might do to Loki. The images are terrifying but Loki doesn’t care because he’s dreaming and, despite the fact that the house appearing in his dreams—the dark house with the sparse furniture and the floodlights and the cameras—feels oddly familiar, he is aware that he is just dreaming. And even if he weren’t dreaming, it wouldn’t matter because he deserves everything that happens to him in this dream because he’s a mishap that shouldn’t have survived long enough to hurt Thor.

He wakes when the doorbell rings, a crushing feeling washing over him when he realizes that he’s fully conscious in the body again, no sign of anyone else. That he had to leave the dream behind the same way he had to leave his family home and the floaty safe space behind.

 _Mama_.

Loki draws a trembling breath, his heart aching for Frigga’s embrace, for her soothing voice, the smile in her eyes, her smell. He thinks about how he used to bury his face in the crook of her arm, inhaling the smell of African flowers and motherly love, and tears well into his eyes. He doesn’t even try to wipe them away. He just cries as the doorbell continues to ring. It has nothing to do with him, Loki tries to tell himself. He tries to ignore the noise but whoever is at the door is very persistent. They’re starting to knock after a while, yelling for someone named Elena in a female voice.

Clearly someone’s got the wrong address. There can be no harm in telling them, right? Loki dries his tears and gets up and quickly checks his appearance in the bathroom mirror—cringing at the blond hair once more but now that Nikias has fucked off, maybe he can dye it black again—before he goes to open the door, staring into the face of a heavily tattooed woman with pink-purple-blue hair, who greets him with, “Hey Robin.”

 _Robin_?!

_What the hell?!_

“Hi,” Loki stammers.

“It’s after ten,” says the woman. “We had an appointment.”

“Oh.” Loki gazes at her for a second, his mind trying to piece stuff together, which turns out to be impossible considering the huge chunk of time that he spent inside his mind this time. “I, uh, I’ll get her. Please, have a seat.” He gestures towards the tattoo studio where he slept on the couch. The woman narrows his eyes at him in suspicion.

Loki flashes her an apologetic smile before he enters Hela’s room. She’s lying on her bed in a position that doesn’t even look remotely comfortable, her limbs sprawled out awkwardly. “Wake up,” Loki says. “You have a customer.”

There’s no reaction and he closes the door behind him, switching on the light. “Hey! Wake up!”

No response.

He crawls onto the bed, shaking her shoulder. “You’ve gotta wake up,” Loki says. “There’s someone here for you.”

There comes a slurred gurgle as a response. “Hey!” Loki shakes her more violently and the door opens, the woman peering into the room. “Wake up!”

What comes out of Hela’s mouth is unintelligible.

“Wake up!”

What he hears is something like a groan, followed by more slurring. _Jushsh_ … _geshhs_ … _ouofmyfaccce._ Hela’s arm moves, blindly punching the air.

“Yeah, I guess I’ll go somewhere else then,” says the woman.

“I’m sorry.” Loki harrumphs. “She, uh, had a rough night.”

“No kidding.” The woman glares at him as Loki leaves Hela to herself and leaves the bedroom again, demanding her money back.

Loki raises his eyebrows. “But she hasn’t tattooed you yet, has she? What money?”

“My deposit?” The woman asks, looking at him as if he lost his mind. “The seventy-five dollars I paid in advance? Fuck, what’s wrong with you?”

 _I just came back last night and I have no fucking clue what the hell is going on over here_. “Oh,” says Loki. “Of course. I’m sorry.”

He walks into the tattoo studio on nothing but a hunch, the woman watching him like a hawk, because if that’s where Hela does her business, the money might be there too, right? It’s only reasonable or maybe it’s not because it’s Hela he’s fucking dealing with and whatever money that person gave her has probably already been invested in drugs. Loki opens some drawers in Hela’s desk, searching for, well, _something_ , and what he finds is an envelope. It’s dark blue and it has a scribbled message in a really bad handwriting on it that says ‘Just think about it’ with a smiley face. Loki opens it and there’s a couple of hundreds in it. He takes one of them out and hands it to the woman. “Keep the change. I’m sorry she bailed on you like that.”

The woman smiles. “Thanks. You’re a good kid, Robin. You should get outta here.”

 _If only I could_.

 _My fucking name is not Robin_ , _by the way_!

 _What the fuck did you do_ , _Nikias_? _Why is that woman calling me Robin_?

“Maybe some day,” says Loki and his chest yawns open at the thought.

“Don’t wait too long,” says the woman and then she sees herself out, leaving Loki to himself.

He sits down on the couch he slept on and counts the money. Minus the bill he just gave away, there are nineteen-hundred dollars in the envelope. Nineteen-hundred fucking dollars. He thinks about where to hide it because, if he needs to make an escape after all for whatever reason, that money will certainly be a game-changer. Loki’s eyes land on the plush elephant that was lying on his couch when he went to sleep the previous night, dulled by the gin and the rush of the blade. He inspects it, turning it in his hands, and then he puts the money away and goes to look for some sewing needles but, of course, Hela doesn’t have anything like that in her apartment. She doesn’t have much of what he’d suspect normal people to possess. The whole apartment is a mess too. There’s dust and ash stains everywhere. The sink in the kitchen is sticky and filled with dirty dishes, even though some of them have been half-heartedly cleaned and put in a dish rack. There are tons of empty bottles everywhere. The whole place reeks of pot and something even worse. Sex, maybe. Or decomposition.

Hela must truly be a talented artist if people come here and endure that but, then again, he is a talented artist too and he must have inherited it from somewhere. Besides, the studio is far cleaner than the rest of the place. He thinks of bolting with the nineteen-hundred dollars but with his face all over the news, who knows where he might end up. Who knows who’d recognize him. But, then again, the way he looks right now with his blond hair and the dress he’s wearing because Nikias is apparently non-binary … Maybe he can pass as a female but without an ID … He engages in serious mental gymnastics until Hela makes herself heard again with another scream slash slur.

Loki tries to ignore her but it’s pretty hard to do that because she sounds really, really bad. He blows out a breath and enters the bedroom once more. “Yes?”

“Youjushspleasheeyoushshe,” comes from Hela. Or something like that.

“What?” Loki asks.

“Pleashhesyoujshhust—”

“You’re slurring your words.” Hela gurgles something else. “I don’t understand what you want from me. I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

There is a long pause. “Painkillersh …”

 _Yeah_ , _right_.

“I’m gonna call nine-one-one,” says Loki, suddenly panicking because a tremor rocks through her body, shaking her.

“Nooo,” comes from Hela and she actually opens her eyes then. “Pleashedon’t.”

“But you need to detox,” Loki gasps as if he could reason with her in her current state.

“Jussshtgetem … bathshroomdrawer.”

Loki swallows because seeing someone this low is pretty fucking scary. Since he doesn’t know what else to do, he fetches her a glass of water from the bathroom. Drinking water can never hurt, right? He makes her drink and a great deal of it splashes onto her face and shirt because her hands are shaking like crazy. He wonders what’ll happen if she dies. He wonders what’ll happen to him if he calls nine-one-one. He wonders how she can be alive after all these years of doing this to herself, wonders why he is still alive as his eyes land on the digital clock on her nightstand.

October 27th, 2019.

 _So_ , _when is my real birthday_?

It’s not in a few days.

 _October twenty-seventh_ , _I think_. _I went into labor around eleven on the twenty-sixth_. _You made it out kinda fast but I don’t remember how fast_. _Could have been before midnight_ , _could have been after_.

It was either yesterday or right now.

He’s sixteen and he’s all alone. Alone with a drug addict who recklessly discarded him when he was a baby and probably doesn’t even remember who he is right now because all she cares about is getting higher. Thor’s sixteenth birthday was a blast and all of his friends and Uncle Tyr and their cousins from Norway were there, and Loki won’t even have a cake or a hug. Loki won’t have anything.

Not that he deserves anything but the realization still stings.

“Yourekillingme,” Hela slurs in basically one word. “Itsshshlikedanglingabladeinfrontofyourfasshhe. Havesomemershyyy.”

Loki understands the urge and how it consumes your entire being well enough. He understands that, when the urge overwhelms you, there is nothing to stop the tingling in your fingers or the crawling under your skin that makes you want to scrape away all your flesh with your bare hands.

He understands.

There are three orange pill bottles in the bathroom drawer, each of them at least half-full. OxyContin. Methadone. Percocet. There are two bags of powder with that and another bag containing a crystalline substance. He decides on the oxy and gets her a second glass of water just in case.

“Drink,” says Loki and she does. Reluctantly, he hands her the bottle, which she opens with shaky hands but, _what the freaking hell_ , she doesn’t just take one pill, _no_ , she brings the bottle to her lips and, before Loki can react, she swallows a mouthful. “No! Give me that!” Loki yells, yanking the bottle out of her hands. “Are you out of your mind?!”

 _Of course she is_.

 _Like mother_ , _like son_.

Hela coughs and sinks back into the pillows, her eyes closing, a blissful smile creeping onto her lips. “Thankyou.”

 _Fuck_.

 _Fuck_ , _fuck_ , _fuck_.

Loki looks at the bottle in his hands, thinks about all the drugs in the bathroom drawer, thinks about the bottle of gin he didn’t finish last night. He could swallow them all and wash them down with the rest of the booze and it’d be over. It’d probably be over almost instantly but, after seeing Hela in such a wretched state, he is too scared to do this to himself. He doesn’t want to suffer. Doesn’t want to have a seizure or start vomiting because he’s the fucking pathetic coward Nikias always told him he was. Plus, it’d be way too easy an escape. He deserves to be punished for what he did to his brother who loved him so much and who Loki ended up betraying because of his weakness and fucked-up-ness. He can’t just escape that. It wouldn’t be fair to Thor.

But maybe ...

He walks into the kitchen and pours himself a gin, his eyes lingering on the pills he placed on the counter. He takes a few sips— _Happy Birthday to me_ , _happy birthday to meee_ —before he takes the pill bottle back to the bathroom and empties it into the toilet, empties the Methadone and the Percocet too, followed by the powder and the crystals, discarding her drugs the same way she got rid of his the previous night, and then he flushes it all down.

Flushes it all down and waits.

He sips another drink, makes himself a sandwich and then he walks into the bathroom. He removes the bandage Thanos put on him the previous night and takes a shower, a long, hot shower, the water stinging him whenever it touches the barely healed cuts, making him smile, and when he’s done, he stares at the three toothbrushes for a good long moment, no way of knowing which one is his. He searches for an unused one but, this time, he’s out of luck, so he just uses his finger and the mouth wash.

He sneaks into Hela’s room again to get dressed, trying to be quiet, which is rather unnecessary because she’s as out of it as possible, snoring softly.

He opts for black leggings and another green oversized blouse.

After that, he actually starts to clean the kitchenette because he has nothing else to do and because the place grosses him out. He throws the amassment of empty gin bottles into the reeking trash and empties out the ashtray on the dining room table. He takes the trash out, briefly considering taking out Hela’s marijuana stash sitting on the couch table with it but then remembering that medicinal marijuana is legal in California and leaving it there. The sunlight touching his skin feels weird and he tries to think about when he was last out in the sun but he draws a blank because he always holed himself up in his room ever since he started cutting. _You can’t just hole up here like some vampire in a vault_ , Thor’s words ring out in his skull and a sob tears loose from Loki’s chest.

 _Thor_.

 _Believe it or not_ , _I actually wanna spend time with your sorry emo ass_.

 _Brother_ ... _I am sorry_. _Fuck_ , _I’m so sorry_.

“I’m sorry that I’ve been such a disappointment. I’ll never bother you again, brother, I promise.” Loki draws a deep breath, trying to ignore how much being away from Thor and Frigga hurts as the dumpster’s lid thuds shut. “I’ll stay here and never cause you any trouble ever again.” A sob creeps into his voice. “Please, just be okay.”

He walks back into the apartment, eerily numb all of a sudden, and walks straight into the kitchen to pour himself another drink and that actually makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it, because drugging himself is ingrained in his DNA. He’s just as pathetic as his mother. He’ll probably end up just like her, slurring and drooling in his bed, crying out for drugs to shut down his crazy brain.

 _Unless_ …

Loki’s eyes land on the knife block. He takes the largest one out, toying with it, turning it in his hands. He could do it. He could slice into his wrist and he’d never have to breathe again. Never have to think again. Never have to live with himself again for another day. Never have to disappoint anyone else ever again. It’s oddly frightening that Nikias isn’t there anymore, that his voice doesn’t keep him company anymore. He was there all the time for the past months and now he isn’t and it doesn’t even occur to Loki what that means. It doesn’t occur to him that a traumatic experience might have made Nikias retreat the same way Loki retreats when he can’t deal. No, what Loki thinks is that Nikias’s only objective is to punish him.

And rightly so because Loki allowed harm to come to his family. The family who showed mercy and took him in, trying to love him despite the fuck-up that he is.

He deserves everything he’s going through and he certainly doesn’t deserve a quick death. Definitely not. That wouldn’t be fair.

He rolls up his sleeve and cuts into his right arm a few times because his left isn’t yet scabbing. He sits there, waiting, letting the blood drip onto the floor, staring at it, trying to think.

When the blood has congealed, he reaches for a kitchen towel and cleans the floor. Eventually, he ends up cleaning the whole apartment because how could he even stay here if there’s dust and dirt and sticky remains of booze and food literally everywhere?

He finds ‘his’ ID. _Robin Morrison_. It’s not him on the photo but the resemblance is striking. South Los Angeles address. Date of birth May 3rd, 2001.

He wonders where this ID came from. Wonders if Thanos had anything to do with it.

He’s ‘officially’ eighteen.

He can leave.

He _should_ leave.

After he’s done, he sits down on the couch, trying to ignore the smell of pot, trying to ignore that today might or might not be his birthday, trying to stifle the urge to call Frigga and beg her to come pick him up, and he waits. When nothing happens, he pours himself another drink. Empties the bottle. Watches TV. Nods off and snaps back to attention a couple of times.

It’s after five in the afternoon when Hela finally staggers out of her bedroom after having slept the whole day, mumbling and cursing under her breath.

Loki tenses when he hears the drawer opening in the bathroom.

When he hears Hela scream in a way that doesn’t sound remotely human.

He gulps and pushes himself off the couch, tiptoeing towards the bathroom.

“Where is my stuff?” Hela yells at him, her voice still breathy, her words still slurring. _Whereshmyshtuff._

“You mean your drugs?” Loki asks back in a croaked whisper, trying to find his own voice. He clears his throat. “They’re gone. I flushed them down the toilet for your own safety.”

“You …” Hela glares at him with a feral glint in her eyes.

“Plus, you had no scruples flushing the blades away, so.” Loki shrugs, his heart picking up speed in anticipation. “An eye for an eye.”

Hela roars, mumbling something unintelligible as she lunges at him and the impact of her fury is greater than he anticipated. She slaps him across the face and she shoves him away, sending him toppling to the floor, his shoulder crying out in agony once more because, apparently, it’s not _fully_ healed _yet_ even though it seemed fine this morning, and then she jumps onto him, her knees pressing into his sides, her hands going for his neck. She chokes him, yells at him, curses him, her eyes wild, and Loki struggles for breath. It’s not gonna be long now. It’s gonna be all over. It’s all—

 _No_!

Apparently, Tony Stark was wrong and Loki does have some rudimentary self-preservation skills because he’s only sixteen and this can’t be it.

“Stop,” Loki pleads _._

 _“Youfuckingbrat_ ,” Hela screams.

“No,” Loki gurgles because there is no air anymore. “No … Please …” The words come out strangled. “No.”

Loki gulps for breath. “Mom!”

 _Mama_.

 _Help me_.

At his last resort, her face falls, realization washing over her.

“Mom, please!” Loki yells and she lets go then, panting, crumbling into a heap beside him. Loki draws a breath, and another and another, his chest and throat burning as he tries to fill his lungs with new air.

“ _I’mssssorry_ ,” gasps Hela, terror flaring in her gaze. “I … Shit, I’m _sssorry_.”

Loki wheezes.

“I … You … Why didchu …”

 _Because I am too much of a pathetic lame ass coward to do it myself_.

“I spared the pot,” Loki whispers.

She is fighting herself for a moment, reaching out to him, stopping halfway, her hand hovering in the air, but eventually, she pulls herself up from the floor, staggering away from him.

“Do you even know what day it is?” Loki rasps from the floor where he keeps lying because he can’t find the strength to get up.

“What difference does it make,” comes Hela’s answer from somewhere in the living room.

“It’s the twenty-seventh of October,” Loki sobs.

There is a pause.

A long pause.

“Happy sweet sixteen,” Hela yells into his direction eventually. “Want a zute to celebrate?”

Loki does not. He wants to go home. He wants to throw himself into Frigga’s arms, breathe in her smell and her love. Pot reeks. But he burned all of his bridges, didn’t he, and if he can’t kill himself, well, a zute might at least take the pain away. He can’t get up though because it’s all pointless. It’s exhausting just to breathe and that’s not because of what Hela did.

He can breathe again and yet he can’t.

 _Mama_.

 _Please_ , _come take me home_.

He lies on the floor. Existing hurts. He lies there until Hela calls out to him again. “Kiddo?”

Her voice is shaky, panicky.

Loki struggles to his feet and stumbles into the living room. Hela is in the process of rolling herself a joint but her hands are shaking too much and the pot is all over the table. Her face is colorless, beads of sweat on her forehead. “I-I think y-you need to d-drive me to d-detox.”

“I literally just turned sixteen today,” Loki says, thinking of what happened the last time he got behind of the wheel of a car. “What makes you think I can drive?” _Also_ , _I’m slightly tipsy_. “I’m just gonna call—”

Hela’s lips open and she guffaws despite the tears spilling into her eyes. “Please, stop _. Jussststop_!”

“Stop what?” asks Loki, bewildered.

“You’re doing that on purpose.”

“I’m not—”

“You’re trying to make me mad. You’re an alien, a spy. I knew it. You were sent here to torment me! You’re my punishment!”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Loki cuts in but Hela keeps going and all he can do is stare at her.

“You probably inserted a chip into my brain that makes me go all crazy. I know it. You’re just here to mess with my mind. This is Odin’s revenge. He’s still mad about that ring.”

“ _What ring_?” Loki blows out a breath because not only is she slurring her words but what she's saying doesn’t make any fucking sense. “What the hell are you even talking about?”

“They probably did this on purpose,” Hela continues, her hands twitching, her eyes growing wider. “You aren’t my son. If you were, our tissues would’ve matched. This is all a conspiracy. A giant conspiracy because Odin hates me and I know for sure that my son died. He died. There’s no way he survived and y’all are playing me! You are making me mad on purpose! Just admit it!”

“I—” Loki begins.

“You _are_ Frigga’s son.” Hela cackles. “She told me you were mine to trick me into keeping you to punish me. She knew you’d drive me crazy. You probably drive everyone crazy and they’re using you to punish me because I stole from them. You’re here to drive me insane! Just admit it! You’re my punishment!”

“You’re paranoid,” Loki replies, trying to ignore her words because she is probably slithering into a drug-induced psychotic episode at this very moment but no matter how hard he tries to tell himself that, her words still hurt.

 _You drive everyone crazy_.

“I’m _not_ paranoid,” screeches Hela. “You’re my punishment. They sent you here! This was all a scam and now I … I … I am freaking out because … you’re here to make me mad.”

“Hela?” Loki gulps because, suddenly, these six words is all she repeats, over and over again, her gaze unfocused, and fear slams into him. “Hela?” He shakes her, gently slaps her cheek. “Say something!”

“You’re here to make me mad,” whimpers Hela. “You’re here to make me mad, you’re here to make me mad.”

Loki gulps and searches for her phone that still has a fingerprint lock. He presses his finger onto it until the emergency option appears as he walks towards the dining room table, sifting through the messy pile of unopened bills for Hela’s address.

“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”

“Yeah, uh, hi, I’m at 1316 W 4th Street and my neighbor, Hela D—uh—Elena Morrison”— _What the hell_?—“is having a psychotic break.” He waves his hands in front of her face but she isn’t responding, just keeps repeating the same words over and over again, her eyes wild. “I mean not that I am an expert”— _but I did a bit of research because I too am crazy_ , _you see_ —“but she’s been abusing prescription drugs, cocaine and alcohol for years and right now, she’s unresponsive and she just keeps babbling in paranoid and I think she really needs medical attention.”

 _She also tried to kill me_.

“Please make sure she won’t harm herself. An ambulance is on the way. What’s your name?”

Heart pounding, Loki ends the call, staring at the woman who birthed him, his stomach revolting against the pitiful sight because this is where he came from. This is why he is so messed up. This is why nobody will ever love him.

Loki walks into the studio, leaving Hela to her psychotic drug ramblings, stuffs the nineteen-hundred dollars into the waist of his leggings, changes into a dress that isn’t bloody and then walks into the bathroom, looking at himself in the mirror. Blond hair, leggings, a dress. Good enough to pass for someone who isn’t the Loki everyone is still looking for. He twists his hair into a bun for good measure, waiting for the sirens to approach, and when he hears them, he bolts with the cash and the fake ID, leaving the apartment door open for the paramedics, running as fast as he can.

He doesn’t know where to.

He just knows he doesn’t want to stay there, doesn’t want to get caught, doesn’t want to go back home, even though he does, _he really does_ , but not like this. Not after what he did. Not when Odin will throw him out of the family for what he did to his true son.

Throw him out or worse.

No, Loki burned his bridges.

He’s on his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I totally did not have this song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jKx0NSNGEQ stuck in my ear the whole day. I am messed up, I know *sighs*
> 
> Apart from that, Loki calls Frigga 'mama' in his head because that's how he referred to her when he was a child (and it's also the moniker Leah uses, by the way, in contrast to his other toddler alter who called her 'mommy'). It's a part of him that he tried to erase though to not be a needy child anymore, which is why he started calling her 'mom' when talking to her at some point. 
> 
> And, in case you were wondering, Frigga's perfume is Love, Chloé. 
> 
> And now I'll continue working on the next chapter.
> 
> See ya x


	8. Where did we go wrong?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hela's dam finally breaks. Apart from that, we learn that Tony Stark is a really, really good family friend :)

On some mornings, Frigga does not immediately remember what happened to her family when sleep releases her. On some mornings, she can stretch herself and exist in blissful oblivion for a few seconds until she opens her eyes and sees that she is not sleeping in the master bedroom anymore because she broke up with her husband. Until the knowledge that Loki is still missing hits her again. It’s been a month now and the case gradually disappeared from the news over time as every case does when no leads turn up and other terrible things happen that refocus the public’s attention. When neither the cops nor the private investigators Odin hired because of the LVMPD’s “blithering incompetence” found any trace of Loki after about two weeks, everyone started assuming the attempted-murder-suicide scenario. Nobody said anything to her about that, of course, but she can see in the way Detective Coulson is looking at her now that he’s given up hope of finding her boy alive. Which is why she started talking to a grief counselor about Loki and about Thor too because even though her eldest woke up three times after first opening his eyes, it’s never been long and he’s never been lucid or strong enough to engage in serious conversation.

A deep, painful sigh rises in her chest.

Getting out of bed takes strength. Showering and getting dressed takes strength. Making breakfast takes strength. Eating the breakfast takes even more strength.

“Frigga? Are you up?”

Dealing with Odin takes even more strength than forcing nutrients into her body.

He is already sitting in his office despite the early hour, going through financial statements. They still live together in the house, if only because Frigga has been clinging to the hope that Loki would come home one night, needing her to be there for him, but they sleep in separate bedrooms, take separate meals and make sure they stay out of each other’s way after she filed for divorce. It worked for now because it’s a big house.

Odin doesn’t look up from what he is doing when she enters. He’s still on sick leave, actually taking the doctor’s advice to heart for once, but the way he’s busying himself with all sorts of other things—mainly preserving his (mostly financial) interests with the lawyer he hired, it seems—still can’t be healthy. She shoves the thought away because he isn’t her responsibility anymore. Never has been, because he’s a fifty-nine-year-old man who can very well or, at least, should be able to, in theory, take care of himself.

“I suppose you’re going to want the cabin, yes?”

She thinks about how she took Loki there and cradled him to her chest on its porch when he was sick as a child and feels a pang in her heart. Thankfully, she doesn’t start crying again because her body has seemingly run out of tears to shed lately. “Can we please not do this now?” she asks softly.

“We’ll have to do it at some point,” Odin points out, which is true but enrages her nonetheless because she damn well knows that he’s only doing this because she offended his pride and insulted his ego when she left him.

Frigga inhales, exhales, _deep_ _breath_ , _deep_ _breath_ , but the urge to shake his stubbornness out of him remains. “I was just on the way to the hospital,” she tells him.

He looks up then and something flickers through his eyes, his forehead twisting into a frown of worry.

“You know that there’s nothing that stops _you_ from driving to the hospital from time to time to hold Thor’s hand, right?” Frigga asks pointedly because, after initially spending a lot of time with his son while Odin himself was still a patient, his visits have become scarcer and scarcer since.

He closes his eyes and massages his temples. “Yes, there is,” he says, his voice barely above a whisper.

“Of course,” Frigga scoffs, her voice sharpening as she gestures towards the paperwork on his desk. “Because splitting our fortune is so much more important than comforting your son. How foolish of me to assume otherwise.”

“That’s not … what I meant,” says Odin. He opens his eyes, his gaze searching for hers.

She raises her eyebrows at him in anticipation. “What did you mean, then?” She crosses her arms in front of her chest. “Enlighten me.”

He blows out a breath, hesitates. Draws another breath, his eyes fleeing hers. “How could I even look him in the eye?” he whispers at last. “After …”

“After what?”

There is another long pause.

“After being the father that I was.”

“Does that insight extend only to Thor or to the both of them?” Frigga asks, closely studying his expression because, despite showing no emotion about his adopted son’s disappearance except anger about what Loki did to Thor so far, he _did_ hire a team of PIs to find Loki when the cops came up with nothing.

“You’re right,” sighs Odin. “Let’s not do that now.”

* * *

Hela is wading hip-deep through a stinky lake in utter darkness, not a star in the sky, the moon veiled by a thick blanket of clouds, a chilly breeze piercing her skin even through her clothing. She’s shivering from the cold, panting from the effort, her teeth clattering but she knows she has to push forward, has to get to the deepest point, because if she does, she’ll be sucked in and everything will be over. She’ll think no more, hurt no more. There’ll be nothing but blissful silence engulfing her and, come to think of it, that isn’t too bad after all, considering how loud and chaotic her life has been.

Just a few more steps.

Just a few more … Just …

 _No_.

She isn’t done yet. There’s something holding her back again, always pulling her back out.

When Hela’s eyelids flutter open, she sees a doctor standing there. She can’t tell if it’s her doctor because the room is a blur and because doctors look all the same to her with their blue scrubs and the mock-concern they force onto their faces. “Welcome back,” says this particular specimen, his voice grim and serious.

“Was I dead?” Hela croaks and she can feel the disappointment course through her.

“No.” He pauses, seemingly for effect only. “You had a psychotic break.”

“What is that?” she mumbles, trying to make sense of his words, which is next to impossible because her body is burning hot with pain.

“A drug-induced break from reality that trapped you in your paranoid thoughts.”

 _Oh_.

She tries to think, tries to recall what happened through the pain exploding in her brain.

 _I took lessons in a stick shift_.

 _I literally only turned sixteen today_. _What makes you think I can drive?_

Is that fucker really surprised that she fell into paranoia?

“Where’s my morphine?” Hela murmurs. “I swear, my whole … everything hurts.”

The doctor’s features finally sharpen a little and he stares at her as if he can’t decide whether he wants to laugh at her or scream in her face. “If I administered morphine now, I might as well cock a gun and shoot you right in the head.”

Hela blinks, trying to think. “What do you mean?”

“We need to get all the drugs _out_ of your system before we can pump new ones _in_ ,” clarifies the doctor, accentuating his words as if he was speaking to a fucking retard.

“Fuck you,” Hela bristles as she reaches for the plastic cup of water on the nightstand, bringing it to her lips with shaky hands but, deep inside her, she knows that he has a point because, _holy freaking shit in hell_ , she almost killed her own child in a daze. _Twice_.

The doctor watches her for a moment, his eyes widening in disbelief or maybe it’s just contempt. “You don’t realize how serious your condition is, do you? It seriously baffles me how you can even be _alive_. The amount of pain medication in your system is far, far beyond the therapeutic range and add to that the cocaine—”

 _Blah_ , _blah_ , _blah_.

“Leave me alone,” Hela pleads. “Just … I can’t.”

 _The kid called me ‘Mom’_. 

_I almost killed him and he called me ‘Mom’_.

“You’re displaying symptoms of stage four kidney di—”

“Stop,” Hela wails, rolling onto her side like a pathetic little girl, burying her face in the pillow, pulling the blanket over her as if this foolish move could actually make her invisible. “Stop! Just stop! Leave me alone! I don’t wanna hear this!”

 _He called me ‘Mom’_. 

The doctor goes on but she can’t focus on his words anymore.

 _You_ , _Ma’am_ , _killed an infant_. _Well_ , _almost killed an infant_. _You thought you did_ , _anyway_ , _and you were ruthless enough to use a dead baby to get back at your abusers._

 _I experienced some rather_ , _uh_ , _unpleasant_ , _one might even say traumatic things in my life_ , _such as me almost dying because you left me alone in a car_.

“—considering a transplant as your—”

 _Mom_ , _please!_

_Do you even know what day it is?_

_Please stop seeing that guy!_ _I’m begging you_ , _Mom! Don’t you care about what happens to **me**?_

“—as I don’t see any—”

“Shut up!” Hela screeches and then, for the first time in her adult life, tears well into her eyes and she lets out a sob and another and another, they don’t even fucking stop after she let the first one out no matter how hard she tries to swallow them back down and they rock through her, shaking her entire body, tearing her chest apart.

It’s an ugly, throaty sound.

She can feel the mattress shifting as the doctor sits down on the edge of her bed, softly putting a hand on her back.

 _Pathetic_. 

* * *

Frigga sits down on the bed, taking Thor’s hand in hers, whispering to him. She’s made this her daily routine, to visit him for two hours in the morning and then again an hour in the afternoon, because she realized that staying by his side twenty-four-seven and getting lost in her thoughts was going to wear her out sooner or later. Because she knows she needs to pick her life back up even though it does not feel as if she has much of a life left now that everything around her crumbled into ruins. Still, there _are_ things to do because life didn’t stop just because tragedy befell her family. There’s the divorce to settle and there’s the firm too. She busied herself with putting out a job advertisement for a new assistant manager, as she’d promised Odin she would, and reviewing the first applications. She helped her former assistant manager and now acting manager Chris sort out a series of complicated transactions after one of their clients filed a complaint. She tended to her garden, getting it ready for the winter. She thoroughly cleaned Loki’s room. She bought a new mattress for him because the old one was stained with dried blood pools that had sept through the sheets. Odin frowned upon her when she came home with the new mattress but, despite what the police and everyone else might believe, she knows that her son is still alive. They have a connection that runs deeper than words and she knows, in her heart, that his is still beating. She can feel it.

She can feel—

“Mom?” Thor whispers, his eyelids twitching.

“Yes, I’m here, honey,” says Frigga, squeezing his hand, hope blossoming in her chest even though he came to four times before and never lasted long.

Thor groans, slowly opening his eyes.

“How are you feeling?” Frigga whispers as she brings his hand to her lips to brush a kiss onto its back.

“Like I’m not gonna be out on the field anytime soon,” Thor replies in a weak voice, the hint of a smile ghosting his lips.

Tears well into her eyes then, tears of gratitude, because that was the first humorous thing he said since he first woke about a week ago. “I’m afraid not,” Frigga whispers, kissing his hand once more. “But football can wait. What matters is that you’re going to be okay, you hear me? You pulled through the worst and you’re going to be okay.”

Thor blinks a few times before his eyes travel across the room, finally taking in his surroundings. “What are all those?” he asks, his gaze lingering on all the flower bouquets, some of them still freshly blooming, some of them already in the process of withering away, and all the stuffed animals decorating his otherwise bleak hospital room.

“Gifts from your friends and teammates.”

He smiles briefly but then comes the question Frigga has been dreading. “Are Loki and Dad okay? It’s always just … you. Why haven’t they come to see me yet?”

“Your father recovered. He’s at home.”

“Busy then,” Thor concludes, disillusioned.

Frigga nods, her son’s sober conclusion driving a knife into her heart. “We’re, uh, getting a divorce.”

“Yeah, I figured as much,” Thor whispers, his voice still weak. “How are Loki and Nikias though? Is he … still mad at me? I want to talk to them, Mom.”— _Them_.—“Why aren’t they ... Loki blames himself, doesn’t he?”

“No, honey, he’s, uh,” Frigga begins.

“Did Dad send him to a psych ward?” Thor asks because, for him, that surely is a logical conclusion and she knows she could say yes. Hell, maybe she should say yes. Maybe she should withhold the truth from him until he is stronger but, then again, if she did that, she’d slip right back into old habits and he’d be furious with her once more if she lied to him again about something as grave as this.

“Loki is missing, honey,” Frigga says softly. 

Thor tries to prop himself up on his elbows instantly, trying to scramble into a sitting position, his eyes going wide. “What do you mean ‘missing’?”

“Don’t try to get up, please.” Frigga softly pushes him back down. “Keep still.”

“Mom,” Thor whispers.

Frigga draws a deep breath. “He ran away after the, uh, incident.”

Thor merely stares at her. “Where to?”

Frigga shrugs helplessly. “Well, if I knew where he was, he wouldn’t be missing.”

Thor looks puzzled at that for a second. “But … it’s been so long …”

Frigga gulps. “A month, yes.”

“Maybe he called me but my phone … it was dead and …”

“No, he didn’t.” Frigga harrumphs. “Your friend Tony, he found a way around the pin code and the access pattern.”

“Tony hacked into my phone?” Thor asks, a small laugh escaping his lips.

“Into the LVMPD’s database too,” Frigga concedes softly, still feeling her ears heat up in shame at the thought. She refused at first when he made the suggestion, afraid of being caught, but eventually, she gave in because how could she trust Coulson to tell her everything after he made it clear that he blamed them for what happened? “They don’t have a lead.”

Thor swallows, tears springing to his eyes.

“At one point, they thought he might have left with Hela,” says Frigga even though, after what Loki said to Hela in the kitchen, she never truly considered the possibility that he could have gone with her. That he wouldn’t have at least called her and told her he was okay if that had been the case. That he’d do that to either her or to himself. Besides, the thought of Loki having to live with a drug addict was too much for her to consider because Hela surely wouldn’t try to coax him into eating his food or pay attention to his injuries. She probably wouldn’t care if he drank or not and … _Loki is already using alcohol to escape from his own thoughts_ , Dr. van Dyne’s words echo through her skull again. _What do you think he’d do with medication_?

 _What do you think he’d do with cocaine or crack or painkillers_?

No, she still can’t afford to think about that.

“What did Hela say?” Thor asks, his voice still weak, his skin uncharacteristically pale, his eyes shiny.

“Nothing.” Frigga sighs. “They couldn’t track her down. They assume she changed her name. I’m sorry,” she adds, not knowing what she is actually apologizing for.

“Fuck,” mumbles Thor, wiping a tear away.

“You saw her car though, didn’t you?” asks Frigga after a pause, hope sprouting in her chest once more.

Thor’s eyes light up briefly. “It was a Celica. Dark green, in pretty bad shape. California plate but I … I don’t remember.” A sob rises in his throat. “It had a ‘y’ in it.” At that, new tears spill out of his eyes and he rolls over, burying his head in the crook of his arm. “It’s my fault, isn’t it?”

Frigga’s heart aches for him and she rubs his arm, soothing him. “No, honey, it wasn’t your fault. Why would you say that?”

“I had him,” Thor whispers. “I had him, Mom. He almost put down the shard before I called him ‘brother’. Why did I have to call him ‘brother’?” Another sob builds up in his throat. “I’m sorry, Mom,” he gulps.

“You don’t need to be sorry, honey,” Frigga gasps, one of her palms rubbing his arm, the other moving across his shaking back in large circles as she wonders how on Earth their family dynamic could become so intricately twisted that Thor feels a need to apologize for having been stabbed by his little brother.

She thinks back to what she said to him when she picked Loki up at the cabin. _God_ , _this family has a lot to work out_. Thinks back to what he replied. _That_ , _mother_ , _is an understatement_.

At least, Thor is awake now.

At least, one of her sons returned to her.

At least, there finally is a bit of hope again.

* * *

“Dammit.”

Odin Borson curses under his breath and massages his chest because he can feel his blood pressure go up as soon as he lays eyes on Dr. Janet van Dyne’s one-hundred-eighty dollar bill for Loki’s therapy session back in September. He tries to calm himself, _deep breaths_ , _deep breaths_ , because the doctor’s warning is still ringing out in his skull. The only problem is, there is no calming himself when it comes to Loki.

It wasn’t always like that.

Despite what Frigga now chooses to believe, the sight of the fragile little body Hela so recklessly left in the cold did soften his heart when he laid eyes upon him in the neonatal intensive care unit for the first time. He did want to help that helpless little creature and he knew then that his wife was right when she told him that he’d end up in the foster care system if they didn’t take him in. He also knew, however, that Hela consumed drugs while she was pregnant—or maybe he didn’t know, not at the time, only had a strong suspicion that turned out to be true—and he wasn’t as blinded by maternal instincts as Frigga was and still is. He knew then that the boy would have issues.

Odin chose to believe her anyway when she said it didn’t have to come to that because he loved Frigga, still does, and because he couldn’t refuse her pleas when she looked at him the way she did. Gosh, how much he loves her. How much he despaired in the past because she never loved him back the same way. It’s probably why he started lashing out at her and pushing her away but that is a train of thought for another time.

There were troubles when Loki was small, yes, but he chose to ignore those too because caring for the baby filled Frigga with happiness and because Thor loved his new infant brother with every fiber of his small body. It was a delight to watch how he cradled him, clumsily but carefully, in his toddler arms.

Odin thought it might work out after all.

Only it didn’t.

Loki grew into a child and then into a teenager but no amount of love, no amount of affection could ever satisfy him. He would always ask for more. More hugs, more love, more reassurance, depleting everyone’s emotional resources, claiming Frigga all for himself, preventing her from being a wife to him and a mother to Thor.

Eventually, Odin’s frustration got the better of him and, soon after that, inevitably, the fighting started.

 _If that boy could just listen for once_ , _goddammit_.

Odin can’t tell how many times he witnessed Thor trying to approach his brother, trying to show him how much he cared, but Loki pushed him away all the same.

Words don’t get through to Loki.

Words aren’t enough.

And now this.

Loki stabbed Thor because … Thor, if ever so briefly, _hesitated_ to welcome his unpredictable, mentally deranged teenage brother into his apartment, into his life?

How could Loki not see the impossibility of the demands he was making on his brother?

How could he not see that Thor has never been under any obligation to care for him, especially not after the insults Loki hurled into his face?

Because Frigga made him the center of her world. Because she showered him with love, all her love, leaving very little for the rest of the family, and still, it was never enough.

All the hugs she gave him, they were never enough.

Nothing has ever been enough for Loki because Loki is convinced that no one gives a damn about him even if their entire life started revolving around him the minute Frigga walked into the house with him and, yet, she remained blind.

Was it really such a surprise for her that he turned away from the family and sought refuge in his work when she would remain impervious to his advice regarding Loki, ignoring his carefully worded observations that, maybe, she was overtaxing Thor a little? When Loki grew increasingly more hysterical and increasingly more impossible to communicate with and Thor developed into a rebellious teenager who sneaked out at night to make out with girls or party with his friends, entering the developmental stage in which parents are usually perceived as nothing but a nuisance?

At that time, it did not seem as though he was still needed, which is why he dedicated increasingly more time to his work. At first, no one complained but then he arrived three hours late to Thor’s seventeenth birthday party after promising the family that he’d shift down a gear that weekend and, even if Thor himself didn’t seem overly upset about it, Frigga was furious.

And maybe rightfully so because, following in Bor’s footsteps, Odin didn’t always cut a splendid father figure, especially recently. He can admit that. At least, he can admit it to himself. Sometimes.

He stares at the bill again.

“Oh, Loki,” sighs Odin. “Where did we go wrong with you?”

 _And where the hell are you_?


	9. His way out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki wakes up and makes a phone call. Tony visits Thor in the hospital and opens up a little. Hela makes a stupid decision.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw suicidal thoughts

Loki is in the house again.

Even though he’s dreaming and, in a semi-lucid state knows that he is, the house does feel more real and even more familiar than the last time he walked into it, almost as if he’s been physically there before. It has three floors and the downstairs hallway is dimly lit, the ceiling light bulb flickering. There are two rooms to the left and two to the right, three of them with their doors ajar, the fourth closed. Someone is groaning, screaming, gasping for help behind it, begging someone else to stop. There’s a door leading into a cellar at the end of the hallway. Thanos is there with him, guiding him upstairs, the grip on Loki’s arm very firm, very possessive. He leads Loki into one of the upstairs rooms. There’s a bed in the middle of it with a lot of fluffy looking pillows in white, gray and black. Floodlights. A camera mounted on a tripod.

The room looks cozy enough with its wood paneling, welcoming almost.

And yet …

Thanos smiles at him, coming closer, his hand landing on Loki’s arm, his eyes burning with greed when he meets Loki’s gaze, singing Loki’s skin.

No, this isn’t right.

Something isn’t right.

Loki startles awake, jolting into a sitting position, sweat cooling on his forehead. He needs a moment to remember where he is and what happened before that dream but after a few moments of panting, it all comes back.

He left Hela’s apartment the previous evening, not knowing where to go after what happened, after what he did to Thor, after what she did to him. He aimlessly walked until he grew too tired to set one foot in front of the other and then he walked into Target, buying sunglasses, a handbag, hair dye, a few more clothes, a bit of food. He checked into a cheap, no-questions-asked, cash-only motel and locked himself in the bathroom, covering the blond even if that increases the chances of someone recognizing him because seeing Nikias glance back at him from the mirror every time he caught his reflection almost made him puke his guts out. 

The black stains on the sink are still there when he walks into the bathroom to splash water into his face and so are a few bloodstains that he missed when he tried to clean up after himself the previous night.

Loki can’t believe that he’s actually here, hiding Gone Girl style, holing himself up in a motel room like a shady on-a-run criminal in a stereotypical Hollywood movie. Art imitates life and life imitates art after all, apparently. And, seriously, what choice does he have after what he did to Thor, to his mother, to his family? He broke their fucking hearts. What choice does he have after the mother he belongs with tried to kill him because he provoked her into trying to kill him?

But then again, in a way, he is a numb to all of this. He longed to be in the floaty space again last night, begged someone else to take over so that he could return but, no matter how hard he tried, they wouldn’t let him come back inside. He remained conscious. Well, he remained in reality, at least, because he isn’t a hundred percent conscious, at least not after he woke up. He can see his surroundings and is aware of his actions but he’s still somewhat detached from them, as if shielded by some comic-like magical barrier that stifles smells and sounds and numbs emotions, dulling his senses.

 _There is no way out_.

The realization doesn’t hurt him, not at first, because he can’t go back home after allowing Nikias to hurt his brother and that’s just how it is but, even so, there’s a tiny part inside of him that remains impervious to the numbness. A part that begs him, fiercely begs him to pick up the payphone on the motel parking lot and call his parents’ landline. Loki stands by the window, holding the curtain two hands wide open with his fingers, staring at the phone, its black receiver reflecting the sunlight.

 _Mama_.

They’re probably at work at this time of the morning because he’s been gone a month and nobody came for him. Surely, they have resumed their lives by now— _and who the fuck could blame them_?—but if he called the landline, he’d at least hear his mother speak on the answering machine. The desire to hear Frigga’s voice even if it’s just on a recording is enough to lure him out of his room eventually. He walks over to the payphone, flicking nervous glances over his shoulder, drops a few coins into the slit and waits a few rings, waiting for her voice when suddenly—

“Borson-Odinson-Fjörgyndottir residence,” his Dad barks into the phone and Loki’s heart almost stops.

 _Holy fucking shit_.

It’s 10 a.m. on a Monday morning. What’s he doing at home? Is he still sick?

“Hello? Who is this?”

 _It’s me_ , _Dad_. _I’m sorry_. _I’m gonna go in-patient_ , _I swear_. _I promise_ _I’ll do everything you want and I won’t ever hurt Thor again_ , _but please_ , _just pick me up_.

The words are on Loki’s tongue but then he thinks of the fury blazing in Odin’s eyes when he looked at him. The way he grabbed him by the arms, shaking him, slapping him, calling him a disappointment.

_Do you just want to keep making life difficult for your mother?_

“Is anyone there?”

Loki glances at the motel, at its run-down sign, the half-filled parking lot, but he can’t bring himself to answer. He wants to, _he really does_ , because a part of him still longs for his father’s affection even though he has long accepted that he’ll never receive it. He thinks of Hela, how she wailed and begged for her drugs in her wretched state of withdrawal, thinks of how much Odin condemns her weakness, her pathetic-ness. The same weakness, the same pathetic-ness that he inherited. The reason why Odin won’t ever love him.

Before his Dad can say anything else, a sudden wave of panic washes over him and Loki hangs up, running back into his motel room, bolting the door shut behind him, a guttural sob tearing from his chest.

 _No_ , _there is no way out_.

The numbness returns, engulfing his entire being.

In a thoughtless haze, Loki walks into the bathroom again, filling the filthy tub with water. Stares at it for a while, then glances at the blow dryer on the wall. The place is cheap and, if the condition of his room is anything to go by, the entire electrical wire system is probably in dire need of maintenance. There won’t be any safety switches, no miraculous last-minute rescues. This would be it.

And yet …

 _Coward_ , snarls Nikias, which isn’t actually Nikias because Nikias is still gone and Loki is just imitating his voice to speak to himself. _Pathetic piece of shit_. _Can’t even rid the world of your scrawny little emo ass_. _Don’t even have the guts to kill yourself_ , _wretched skinny psycho bitch_. _You’re good for nothing_. _Why don’t you just do yourself and the world a huge fucking favor_? 

_Do it_.

 _Just do it_.

He can’t.

He wants to but he can’t. 

Not until he can be sure that Thor will recover.

Not until … 

_Mama_. _I am sorry that I never hugged you back and pushed you away all the time_. _I am sorry_. _I’d take it all back if I could_. _I love you_.

Loki walks out of the bathroom and collapses onto the bed, rolling himself into a ball and crying himself hoarse until someone knocks on the wall, yelling at him to shut the fuck up in a husky voice.

 _So_ , _you like pain_?

 _I think I might have a solution for you_.

Maybe Thanos can be his way out.

* * *

_It’s not your fault_ , his Mom said.

 _Please_ , _don’t blame yourself_.

She said it close to a million times before she left his hospital room with the promise to be back in the afternoon and yet Thor can’t bring himself to believe her. Maybe it’s because she looked so old and so desperate, much older than she did a month ago, pale and spent. At the rate she’s going, she’s probably gonna look like King Theoden under Saruman’s influence by Christmas. Not to mention that she is blaming herself as well, even if she tried to conceal it as best as she could. Something was different about her behavior though, Thor now realizes, about the way she carried herself. She went through a pretty shitty month without Loki by her side and with him comatose in the hospital but she didn’t apologize once for any of her shortcomings in the time that led up to this. She did not pity herself. She focused solely on him, on encouraging him.

Even if Thor is still convinced that his mother could have prevented a lot of their family drama from unfolding if she had focused less on her work, he welcomes this change because it reminds him of the kick-ass woman she used to be before Loki shattered her last and every nerve.

Well, Nikias, probably.

Thor’s thoughts instantly dart back to the night of what Frigga euphemistically called ‘the incident’ and, suddenly, he feels like he’s in Loki’s bedroom again, like he sees his brother in front of him with huge pleading eyes full of longing again before change washes over his face and Loki’s green eyes turn darker and his features turn sharper and then there’s the shard of glass from the shattered mirror and Loki-who-is-now-Nikias lunges for him, jumping at him, stabbing him, and Thor’s heart picks up speed when his chest tightens as it did in the cabin and he gasps for breath, convinced he’s gonna pass out again.

He sits there for a while, panting, gulping for breath, trying to get his heart to slow down using the breathing exercises his coach taught the Rebels to stay focused.

Eventually, Coach Tyree’s tactic works and Thor calms down, staring at the ceiling, wondering when the fuck his family became such a mess and why. Thinking about the past fortunately doesn’t cause another respiratory outage, so he stays in the past, mentally picking apart their family history, trying to pinpoint the time everything went to shit.

He’s still lost in his thoughts when Tony Stark walks into his hospital room in the early afternoon with a bag of In-N-Out takeaway, the pleasant smell of burgers and fries wafting into Thor’s nose. “When your Mom told me you woke up, I figured you might crave something to eat that’s not hospital sludge,” says his friend, placing the bag onto his nightstand.

“You’re the best,” Thor says, instantly reaching into the bag with his right arm, the side that thankfully doesn’t hurt, and pulling out a handful of fries, stuffing them into his mouth. “What would I do without you?”

“I’m just glad to see you’re awake,” Tony mumbles as he drags a chair towards the bed and practically collapses into it. “You really had me scared there for a while, Champ.”

“Sorry,” Thor mumbles and then he swallows the fries, unease coursing through him because Tony doesn’t seem well. Not that he’s ever truly well, hasn’t been for a long time, but he’s always been a sassy little shit. He’s not ever _not_ reacted to a compliment or praise with a sarcastic retort and that’s very alarming. He hasn’t removed his sunglasses either, which might be a total Tony Stark thing to do but, combined with his on-edge-ness, alarms Thor too.

“Just so you know, my Mom told me you cracked my phone and, while I appreciate that you’ve helped calm her down, I seriously hope you didn’t use this opportunity to go through the nudes in my gallery,” Thor jokes, trying to make light of the situation because his friend’s uncomfortableness makes him nervous.

Tony chuckles mirthlessly. “Your nudes are harmless compared to mine, believe me.”

Thor sits up a little at the despair in his tone, the fast food on his nightstand entirely forgotten. “What happened? Are you okay?”

Tony snorts. “Funny _you_ should ask _me_ that.”

“Come on, why are you wearing your shades in here?” Thor asks.

Tony forces a fake-grin onto his lips. “To cover my bloodshot eyes?”

“Stark.”

“Fine.” Tony gulps and then, slowly, removes his sunglasses, revealing nasty purple bruising around his left eye. “Tadaaa.”

“Holy shit. Did you get into a bar fight or something?” Thor gasps because he has seen photos and videos of the kinds of parties Tony attends on a regular basis when he’s jetting across the globe and they’re far from harmless.

“Or something,” Tony mumbles, his gaze fleeing his.

It takes Thor’s still sludgy brain a moment to put the pieces together. “No,” he mumbles eventually. “He … he did it again?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re a fucking adult,” Thor gasps as if that’d stop Odin. “What happened?”

“There’s this not very flattering video of me going viral that almost put my Mom into her grave.” Another mirthless chuckle, followed by a shrug. “He confronted me about it because, you know, I’m such a huge fucking disappointment, tainting the family name and, blah, blah, blah, why couldn’t I just take over the family business, blah, blah, blah, same old, same old. But, at least, I’m still walking upright, so I can hardly complain, right? At least, _I_ haven’t been _stabbed_.”

Thor grimaces.

“How does it feel?” asks Tony, a flicker of curiosity in his tired eyes. “I mean, seriously. How does it feel to be stabbed?”

“How do you think it felt, Stark? It fucking hurt. It still hurts. Especially when I do this,” says Thor, lifting his left arm for emphasis.

“Then maybe you shouldn’t do that,” Tony suggests, followed by a slightly less mirthless chuckle.

Thor can’t help but chuckle too. “Yeah.”

There is a long moment of silence after that in which Tony is fiddling with the cuffs of his shirt, avoiding Thor’s gaze. “So, uh, how are you dealing with the whole … Loki situation?” he asks eventually.

“I’m trying not to think about it,” Thor says.

“And how’s that working out for you?”

Thor chuckles grimly. “I keep repeating it in my head, over and over again. That day, the days before that, the past few years, but there’s no way I can tell when Nikias—that’s the one who stabbed me—became an actual person. It was sort of a gradual … I don’t know … I mean, he’s so pissed off even though I never even … _did_ anything, you know. I’ve been racking my brain for what feels like hours but nothing ever changed between us. Between Loki and me, I mean. I just … don’t understand,” he finishes, what little strength he has seemingly leaving him instantly.

Tony looks at him with that peculiar why-are-you-so-dense expression stamped across his face. “You became a teenager.”

 _What does that have to do with anything_ , _for fuck’s sake_? “And?”

“You started playing football. You started dating. You started—”

“What are you talking about?” Thor asks, bracing himself for another one of Tony Stark’s Loki lectures. “I didn’t love him any less just because I started playing football.”

“Maybe not but you spent a lot more time away from home and a lot less time with him. And I’m not saying that to make you feel bad or anything, it’s just—”

“That’s normal teenage behavior,” Thor defends himself. “Like, of course you spend less time with your baby brother when you—”

“Exactly,” Tony confirms. “That’s normal behavior, which is why you shouldn’t blame yourself, Champ. It’s nothing you _did_ , you know. The problem is how Loki reacted to your perfectly normal teenage behavior because Loki is as far from a perfectly normal teenager as humanly possible.” He leans back in his chair and closes his eyes, his fingers kneading the bridge of his nose. “No offense but, please, just remember that, okay?”

Thor blows out a breath. “I will.” _Maybe_. “And next time I see Howard, I’ll accidentally shove his face into a wall or something.”

Tony snorts a laugh. “No, you won’t.”

“You bet your hungover ass that I will. I defended Loki against my Dad. There’s nothing stopping me from doing the same thing for you. Except that I have little to zero strength right now but the doctors are confident that I’ll make a full recovery, so.”

Tony’s eyes grow wide. “You did?”

“Twice, actually,” replies Thor. “I mean, you said it yourself. They shouldn’t have that much power over us anymore.”

Tony clears his throat but nothing comes out of his mouth.

“My Mom filed for divorce, by the way,” Thor says into the silence that ensures.

Tony’s eyes grow even wider. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No,” says Thor and, despite the fact that the news is still somewhat hard to digest, his mother’s decision seems legit to him.

“Holy shit. I should totally just casually drop that in conversation with my Mom. ‘Frigga is getting divorced, you know.’ It’s not a big deal. You could do it, too. Take the fucking hint, Ma’am!”

Thor laughs despite himself, sucking in some air through clenched teeth when a sharp pain shoots through him. “Dammit. Laughing hurts too.”

Tony smiles and, this time, it is genuine. Hell, there are even fucking tears shimmering in his eyes. “I really am glad you made it, Champ,” he says, wiping them away.

* * *

Hela pays the cab driver and then stumbles out of the vehicle and into her apartment after she, much to her doctor’s consternation, discharged herself AMA when she noticed that the paramedics who carted her away the previous night did have enough presence of mind to take her keys and her wallet with them before they left for the hospital. Her boyfriend always ridiculed her for throwing her valuables onto the shelf directly next to the front door whenever she enters her apartment but, as it turns out, this wasn’t such a dumb move after all.

The apartment is unusually clean, reeking of sanitizer, almost making her gag. But what’s even worse is that, just as she feared, there’s no sign of the kid.

After what she almost did to him, she can hardly blame him. He probably ran straight back home last night, in which case the cops will be here very soon, but then again, he had no money of his own, so how would he even … Hela swallows the vomit down, trying to ignore the pain gnawing away at her organs. She reaches for her phone, which died over night, and then searches for her charger, her heart pounding in her chest. Her fingers are still shaking because she’s still in withdrawal or … worse.

 _Can’t think about that now_.

She waits until her phone blinks back to life, punches in her pin code, her hands trembling.

Water.

She should get more water.

She stumbles to the sink and switches on the faucet, drinking greedily.

It does very little.

 _Never mind_.

 _Your own fault_. _Get it together_ , _bitch_.

She opens the fridge next, inhaling a few slices of cheese straight from the package.

 _Food is good_ , _food will keep you alive_.

She can’t recall when she last ingested something solid.

Her hands stop shaking so awfully much. Low blood-sugar. It’s a thing, you know. The kid had to learn that too. Food is important, _oh yes_. Food keeps you alive. Food won’t kill you. Food is nice.

As soon as she can be sure she isn’t dying right where she stands anymore, she sits down, her phone in her hands, her fingers hovering over the screen. She briefly considers calling Frigga but, then again, what would she even say to the kid’s Mom at this point? If she told Frigga what happened … _Hey_ , _it’s me_ , _Hela_. _I have good news and bad news_. _The good news is that the kid was safe with me this past month but then_ , _and here comes the bad news_ , _I ended up almost choking him to death because after weeks of drinking with me_ , _he suddenly decided to get rid of my meds and my drugs and basically everything that keeps me going and then I had a psychotic break and he left and I have no fucking clue where he is right now._

Yeah, right.

That’d go down really well with Frigga.

Besides, the kid will probably tell her the truth in his own words soon enough because, even without money, he could have hitchhiked back to Vegas. He could already be there right now …Unless … Unless he still didn’t want to go back home, of course. Unless he turned to the only other person he knows over here.

She dials his number.

“I’m kinda in the middle of something here,” her boyfriend says instead of a greeting. “This better be important.”

Hela gulps, not knowing why she even made that call. Except that she does. “Have you seen the kid?”

“Loki?” he echoes but then his voice becomes sharp. “Why? What happened?”

“I, uh, I passed out last night and woke up in the hospital this morning,” Hela settles on saying. “And there’s no sign of him. I thought you might’ve …” _Seen him_ , which is stupid and so wrong because, _holy fucking shit_ , he took advantage of him and … and … she can’t think straight. She thinks of the photos, about the kid’s edginess, about how distraught he was after he took those photos.

“I told you to take it easy,” he murmurs.

“I know but …” Hela swallows the excuses down. Because even if the sight of the kid cutting into his own arms transported her right back to the night one of the other girls committed suicide by slashing her wrists with a knife in the room they shared while Hela was sleeping it off, later waking up with blood on her face, she knows that it isn’t an excuse to relapse that hard. That whole thing happened over ten years ago and she should be fucking over it by now. “I got tempted.”

He grunts and she can tell that he’s angry, probably because she let the kid slip away. She can tell by that grunt alone that she’ll regret her relapse and she damn well should regret it. She damn well should regret every single one of her actions this past month, this past year, her whole fucking sorry ass excuse of a life, because she’s a fuck-up that never got anything right and her nerves are screaming for a drink, for a noseful of powder, a pill—anything to make the thoughts and the memories and the pain stop.

“I haven’t seen him but I’ll keep my eyes open and I’ll stop by later, okay?” he asks and then, without waiting for her answer, ends the call.

 _Oh_ , _please no_.

_Why didn’t I just die?_

_How stupid am I_ , _for fuck’s sake_?

She collapses onto her couch, burying her face in the pillows because if she doesn’t want to end up in the morgue, she can’t have that drink. She can’t have that powder or that pill and even if she didn’t care about what it’d do to her now that her body is in such a precarious state—which, miraculously she does, all of a sudden and isn’t that weird—the kid flushed her stash into the motherfucking sewer, leaving her stranded. There are no drugs in the apartment except for the booze in the fridge and the pot that’s still lying on the table.

Pot isn’t such a big deal though, right?

It isn’t processed by her kidneys or her liver or any other organ currently in the process of giving up on her. It’s not technically poison, not technically a drug. It’s just a fucking dried plant.

A dried plant that’s basically medicine.

That’s what the courts determined when they legalized medicinal marijuana in California in 1996 after all.

She can have a spliff, right?

Of course she can have a spliff, because, well, denial is a wonderful thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do you think about what would have happened if literally ANYONE else had picked up that phone because I do, but it would have been too easy. Y'all are probably screaming right now, which is fine. Everything is fine.
> 
> And yes, Thor still has this little anger slash glorification of violence problem and his conception of motherhood is also still a biiiiiit on the toxic side *sighs* He's gonna get there. Eventually.
> 
> And Hela *sighs* Oh, Hela ...


	10. Let’s try this again, shall we?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hela and Loki continue to make stupid decisions that will undoubtedly bite them in the ass later. Thor deals with traumatic memories.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Double-check the trigger warnings, please.

“Loki?”

Loki doesn’t know what startles him more. The sound of his actual name being spoken in public, the deepness of the voice saying his name or the commanding tone of said voice. Or maybe it’s the fact that, even though he set out to find Thanos in his peculiar, lasting state of semi-dissociation, Thanos found him first.

Loki hesitantly turns around. The neighborhood they’re in certainly isn’t Beverly Hills and the first thing he notices is that Thanos is carrying a gun, which is bulging under the sleeveless vest he’s wearing over his signature tank top. _Fuck_ , _how huge he is_. He’s taller than Thor, a whole lot taller, and Thor is six feet fucking three, dammit. “Hi,” says Loki, clearing his throat.

“I’ve been told you were asking around for me,” Thanos tells him in his predator voice, his hand landing on Loki’s ass, forcefully squeezing his left butt cheek. Okay, so maybe this wasn’t the best idea. _What the hell kind of relationship did Nikias have with this creep_? “What a pleasant surprise. You know, for a moment there, I thought I’d have to hurt your Mommy back home to teach you a lesson about the consequences of bailing on me.”

 _Hurt my_ …

Loki’s mind erupts into whiteness but, unfortunately—or maybe fortunately, who knows, fate has a very dark, very twisted, very sick sense of humor after all—it’s just for a few seconds.

 _Nikias_ , _what the hell did you do_?

“And your hair is black again,” Thanos is saying as he reaches for Loki’s head, untwisting his bun so that his hair falls onto his shoulders. He grasps a strand, twisting it in his fingers. “I have to say, it looks so much better on you.”

Something inside Loki revolts against being touched the way Thanos touches him, especially after he threatened to hurt Frigga, something churning his stomach and pushing bile up his throat and making his heart beat erratically. Something inside him is scared too, something or someone, Leah maybe, Loki thinks, because he can suddenly sense her consciousness even if it’s very far away. An image flashes through his mind, an image of Leah being tucked into bed by The Voice, Nikias sitting on the floor, cross-legged and brooding, a deep frown on his face, but it’s gone almost as soon as it came.

“Thank you,” Loki whispers, trying to hold Thanos’s gaze. Despite the fact that his touch is invasive and repulsive, he is drawn to it in some way. He doesn’t know why. Thanos is bad news. Loki can practically smell the danger on him. He smacked Loki in the face so hard that his head slammed backwards. He unscrupulously feeds Hela drugs even though she’s dying. He scared Nikias away. Hell, he probably did kill people before. He might kill Frigga or have people working for him that could kill her and she’d never see it coming and, _holy fucking shit_ , Frigga would probably disintegrate if she knew what kind of guy he’s talking to at this very moment.

“You, uh, said you had a solution,” Loki brings himself to say because what he already assumed to be true two nights ago was just proven to him. Whatever Nikias did, back in Vegas, here in LA, if Loki returns home now, he’ll bring even more harm to Frigga, to Thor, and if he goes back to Hela, he’ll probably end up dead, which, right this second, doesn’t seem like the most pleasant of outcomes. _Why can’t you just make up your mind about your death wish_ , _you pathetic little fucktwat_?

“I said I might have a solution.” Thanos smiles like a shark, twisting his hair once more before releasing it. “But in order to find an appropriate solution, one first has to consider the problem.”

Loki draws his eyebrows together. “What do you mean?”

Thanos is still smiling. “Come on, I’ll take you to dinner. You look hungry.”

Loki figures that Thanos will take him to a restaurant when he hesitantly agrees—anyone would figure that based on his choice of words, right?—but they aren’t driving to a restaurant after they got into a black Chrysler because, _duh_ , a restaurant is a public place where Loki could make a quick escape. Nope, Thanos ends up driving him straight into Hollywood, eventually pulling into the underground garage of a fancy-looking loft building.

 _Right_. _He’s gonna be ultra-safe here_.

“Is this where you live?” Loki asks as they get out of the car.

“Sometimes.”

It’s been like this for the whole drive. Whenever Loki asked a question, Thanos replied either evasively or with one-word answers that didn’t tell him much. He hasn’t learned anything substantial about the guy’s relationship with Hela except that “it’s multifaceted” or what he’s doing for a living except that he does “lots of things” or his interest in Loki except that, apparently, Loki has “a lot more to offer than just a pretty face”. Whatever the hell that means.

Well, at least it means that Thanos does seem to find him pretty, _hell_ , he can see that much in the guy’s hungry eyes, and even if he’s creepy as fuck, it’s nice to know that not everyone thinks of him as some ugly ass unmanly fag wimp.

Thanos leads him to an elevator and Loki fights the urge to step away from him when Thanos stands a little too close to him in the confined space.

The loft on the eighteenth floor he eventually leads him into is everything Hela’s apartment is not and Loki seriously wonders why Thanos would even voluntarily set as much as his big toe into that dump or eat from Hela’s fridge, let alone fuck her in her drenched sheets, if _this_ is how he lives. Well, not that Loki has ever seen him eat anything from the fridge or actually sleep in her bed but still. His place is clean and spacious, a huge living area with white walls, four floor-to-ceiling windows from one of which you can actually see the Chinese Theater, black PVC floor tiles, a sparkling, anthracite kitchenette with black countertops, an anthracite couch with black pillows on and a huge entertainment system surrounding it. Apart from that, there’s a bathroom and two large bedrooms, and even if being here with Thanos still creeps Loki out on some level, at least the luxury makes him feel a tiny little bit at home.

“You can run yourself a bath, if you want,” Thanos offers. Loki does not but, at least, it’ll buy him some time to think. “I’ll get you some fresh clothes.”

Loki closes the bathroom door behind him, suppressing a sob. He’s still mostly disconnected from the part of his brain that processes complex emotions but there’s a lump of unease and fear clumping at the bottom of his stomach because if he tries to bolt now, Thanos might hurt Frigga and, if he doesn’t bolt, he’ll certainly hurt Loki in one way or the other. Which is what he wants, _in a way_ , what he deserves, _in a lot of ways_ , but what he’s afraid of all the same.

There’s no window to climb out of and no key to lock himself in with. There are no razors to hurt himself with either, even if Thanos is clean-shaven everywhere, and no scissors. Nothing sharp, except for the edges of a tube of toothpaste maybe but he tried that once and it’s not a very efficient way to self-harm. On the contrary, it’s frustrating because it doesn’t make you bleed unless you really make an effort. There’s just a satisfying little sting that isn’t enough by far.

Loki sighs and turns on the water. He watches it pour into the tub, trying to think but his mind is in somewhat of a daze. It’s like being drunk in a way, even though he didn’t have any booze or, at least, not that he can recall. He has troubles remembering stuff. He knows that Thor and Frigga are at home and he knows that he loves them and doesn’t want any more harm to come to them but he has difficulties recalling what they look like. At this very moment, Loki no longer even remembers what he did, no, what _Nikias_ did, because it wasn’t him, _no_ , it was not HIM even though he LET it happen. He only knows that what happened was terrible. It’s like a part of him retreated to that lovely floating space where there’s no thinking and no memories while another part of him remains in the real world, dipping his hand into the water to test its temperature.

He sheds his clothes and lowers himself into the tub, closing his eyes when the water’s warmth engulfs his body.

* * *

“So,” says Thanos as Loki slides onto a bar stool across from him in tight black jeans and a long-sleeved white shirt, barefoot, his wet hair wrapped in a white cotton terry towel. “Let’s try this again, shall we? Do you like pain? Do you like to be hurt?”

Loki gulps, gazing at the butterflied steak, the mashed potatoes and green beans on his plate with wide eyes, his stomach rumbling in anticipation. “Why?”

“Why don’t you just answer the question?” Thanos suggests, a subtle but unmistakable threat in his tone.

“I, uh, yes, I guess.” Loki takes a bite of his steak, which is fucking delicious. So, the guy can cook. _Interesting_.

“Tell me about it,” Thanos demands and his gaze is so piercing that Loki feels as if he’s being mentally undressed right where he sits.

“Sometimes, I provoke people on purpose, to make them hurt me,” Loki whispers, shifting in his chair, taking a mouthful of beans to buy himself some more time because he knew when he first laid eyes on Thanos that there’s no escaping that guy. _Dammit_. He’s trapped, actually fucking trapped, and who would have guessed that he doesn’t even _need_ Nikias or any of the other Voices to get him into a mess? That he’d do well enough on his own?

Well, technically, that isn’t true though, because Nikias got him into this mess. Loki is sure of it.

“What people?” asks Thanos.

“My Dad or students who bully me in school or He”— _No_ , _numbnuts_ , _pay attention_!—“Elena.” Loki harrumphs. “I flushed her drugs down the toilet yesterday and—”

 _Whoops_. _Damn you_ , _you useless fucking idiot_. _Just focus_ , _okay_?

His face has darkened. “You flushed something that I paid for down the toilet?”

 _Fuck_ , _fuck_ , _fuck_.

“No, of course not. She already inhaled all the coke you gave her yesterday morning. I meant her pain meds,” Loki hurries to say even though he has no way of knowing whether Thanos paid for those too. _Fuck everything_. “I flushed them down, all three bottles because I knew she’d beat me up and she did. She even choked me.”

Something flickers through his eyes, something like amusement or maybe even arousal. “How is she now, by the way?”

Loki thinks back to the previous night, how she attacked him with wild eyes before slipping into paranoia, and that memory is already blurring too. “Bad. She’s, uh, actually she’s in the hospital right now. I had to call an ambulance and I should probably visit her later.” Maybe that’ll be his ticket out of this apartment because, _holy hell_ , visiting your dying mother in the hospital is a pretty valid reason to delay whatever it is Thanos has in mind for him.

Thanos nods, his face unreadable. “So, you like to be hit?”

 _What the fuck_? _Why does this feel like a job interview_?

“I don’t know, I just …” Loki has no fucking clue why he’s doing these things to himself, of course, because he’s traumatized and suffers from dissociative amnesia, which is why he doesn’t know that he was abused as a child, doesn’t know that he craves to be abused because it’s a familiar sensation in some sick and twisted way and because he is convinced he doesn’t deserve better than being hurt and ignored and abandoned by those he loves. “I guess you could say that, for me, pain is a bit like what coke is for Elena.”

“Ah.”

Loki chuckles nervously and then busies himself with finishing his meal, which is ten times better than he expected it to be. “So, what is it exactly that you’re ‘offering’ me?” Loki asks when he can no longer avoid conversation by means of chewing and swallowing exquisite food. “What is your business anyway? I mean, what do you do, _exactly_?”

Thanos shrugs and repeats his earlier reply. “I do lots of things.”

“What things? I mean, why don’t you just tell me?”

“Come on, playing dumb doesn’t suit you. You’ve seen the house,” Thanos chuckles and that chuckle freezes the blood in Loki’s veins because, _holy fucking shit_ , the house is real. It’s all real. Nikias was there or maybe Leah was or maybe both of them were and their memories seeped into his dreams like someone else’s memories of what happened after he whited out and his Dad took his shirt away to take a look at the cuts seeped into his dreams before. _It’s fucking real_. The beds, the cameras, the screams. Loki tries to swallow, the food suddenly lying very, very heavy in his stomach. “You know there’s a lot more going on than just snapping a few pictures of pretty little boys like you, don’t you? What’s up with you today?”

“Nothing I, uh,” Loki murmurs, his eyes flitting across the room, landing on the door that’s so very, very far away. “I should really check on Elena.” He clears his throat, trying to make his voice sound less small and less shaky. “To see how she’s doing. She was in pretty bad shape, so, uh. Thank you for dinner but I should really go now.”

 _As far away as possible_.

 _Can’t stay in LA_ , _should have taken a Greyhound last night when I had the chance_.

 _Why do I always get myself in trouble_?

Loki rises to his feet, his heart pounding, slamming against his ribs, echoing in his ears, almost deafening him. “I guess I’ll see you around?”

“How stupid do you think I am, hm?” A smirk flickers across Thanos’s expression but then it’s gone and his face darkens, almost as if they were outside and the sun suddenly disappeared behind a cloud. “I’m tired of your games, Loki.” Two syllables, spat like venom. “No one gets to play games with me, is that clear? Especially not some pathetic drug whore’s little bastard child.”

 _Holy fucking shit_.

 _This turned sour waaaay too quickly_.

 _Fuck_ , _fuck_ , _fuck_.

“Of course not.” Loki forces a smile onto his lips, cursing himself and his useless mess of a fucked-up mind.

“Good. Now, get ready,” Thanos demands, the smirk returning to his lips, making Loki shiver again. “I have a job for you that I’m sure will pay off both of us.”

* * *

Hela’s fingers are still hovering over the display of her phone and have been for an hour. Or maybe two hours or maybe a whole fucking day. Who knows? She’s too stoned to reliably determine how much time has passed since she came home from the hospital. All she knows is that she’s hungry and that it’s already dark outside and that she should probably call the cops, which she can’t because if she did that, her boyfriend wouldn’t hesitate to rat her out for complicity or maybe worse, maybe he’d simply put a bullet straight through her brain if she dared to turn him in, or maybe she should really, really call Frigga, but she can’t call the other woman either because if she did _that_ , Frigga would turn her in without thinking twice about it and Hela would have to face the consequences of her own poor life decisions.

And, _damn_ , she knows that cops despise people who’re involved in what her boyfriend is involved in. Apart from that, cops despise whores and addicts. She’d be fucked if she called anyone. Maybe literally because these kinds of things happen to people like her in jail.

It takes a lot of strength to get up, _whoops_ , _dizzy_ , _oh_ , _oh_ , and walk over—crawl over—to the fridge. It’s empty except for the cheese and two bottles of gin. Was it empty before? _No idea_. She eats the cheese, stares at the booze. _Can’t have that_ , _don’t wanna die_. Thinks about ordering a pizza but it’d be very, very embarrassing to have to crawl to the door. She thinks about the look on the potential delivery guy’s face and cackles.

 _Pathetic_. _Just drink yourself to death_ , _you wretched little whore_. _No one will miss you_.

Or maybe not because she’d probably come back anyway.

 _Gosh_ , _you’re still high_ , _aren’t you_? _How come you’re not dead yet_?

 _You know what they say_. _Bad weeds grow tall_.

She must be twenty feet tall in grass by now.

For some reason, Hela finds this thought utterly hilarious and she sits on the floor, giggling to herself for a while. But then, when she thinks about calling Frigga again, her thoughts take her back to the night she rang Odin’s doorbell when she was fourteen, her cheek throbbing where her Mom’s moody asshole boyfriend polished her face. It was Frigga who opened the door back then and her face paled into a grimace of shock, horror.

“Hi, is, uh, Odin there?” Hela asked in the small, frightened voice of her pathetic teenage self. “I need a place to stay.”

Frigga let her in after she explained their relation, letting her in without waiting for her husband’s approval. She led her towards the dining room table and gently sat her down. She stroked over her head, cleaned her wounds, heated up the leftovers of their dinner for her to eat. Odin was distant but told her she could stay for a few days. Frigga prepared a guest bedroom for her and actually hugged her goodnight.

She could’ve stayed there. She did have a chance back then. But she did fuck it up because, thanks to her mother’s lifestyle, Hela was already hooked on drugs at that age. Always the drugs, destroying everything. Every relationship she ever had, every chance at life she was ever given, all destroyed by pills and powder.

Tears spring to her eyes and she hastily, angrily wipes them away.

 _Why are you fucking crying if it’s your own fucking fault_ , _bitch_? _You don’t get to feel sorry for yourself_.

“El?” her boyfriend calls out. “Are you there?” _Oh please_ , _not him_. _Oh_ , _no_. _Can’t deal with him now_. “What are you doing on the floor?”

“I, uh,” Hela begins, clearing her throat. “I was looking for food.”

“I brought some sandwiches,” he says and helps her up, leading her towards the table, seating her down.

“Thank you,” Hela whispers and wolfs down three sandwiches while his half-mock-pitying, half-amused gaze is lingering on her.

“Having the munchies, huh?” he asks after she finished the first one and begins unwrapping the second.

“Shut up,” Hela grumbles and they sit in silence until her stomach is finally satisfied.

“So, how are you doing?”

 _How does it look like I’m doing_ , _you fucking sonofabitch_? “Did you, uh, find the kid?” Hela asks back, her heart picking up speed.

He shakes his head. “Maybe he went back home.”

Hela snorts a laugh. “If he did, the cops would be here by now.”

“Maybe he didn’t rat you out, you know,” says he and Hela has to acknowledge to herself that it’s possible if he was in his annoying toddler state when he returned home because that side of the kid wouldn’t snitch on her and even if he did, that side probably doesn’t even know her address or her last name. Maybe she won’t have to face the consequences of her own poor decisions all too soon after all.

“You did try to kill him after all, so maybe he just wants to forget all about you,” he adds, his gaze piercing hers.

Hela looks up at him. Did she tell him that? She can’t remember. Tears spring to her eyes and she gulps, trying to wipe them away.

“Come on,” says her boyfriend, his hand landing on her shoulder, squeezing it, almost gently. “Let’s get you to bed.”

* * *

Thor bangs on the door of Loki’s bedroom when he hears the screams coming from the other side and it’s weird because he’s only about eight years old but is already wearing a football jersey that’s way too big for him. He pounds his fist against the door, screaming his baby brother’s name until the door finally bursts open. Despite the screams he heard, there’s no one inside. The crib is empty and Thor pants, his eyes scanning the room.

There’s a trapdoor in the floor he never noticed before and Thor drops to his knees, his heartbeat pounding in his ears as he frantically tugs at the latch because the screams come from below now. Eventually, the door pops open, revealing an unlit stairway into the deep, cold air wafting into his face from below.

He gulps and climbs down the stairs, setting one small athletic shoe in front of the other. The screams are getting louder again and, suddenly, an adult Tony Stark pushes past him, flashing him a crooked grin, his teeth bloody, telling him that he should go back upstairs as long as he still has a chance to escape.

Thor gulps but he can’t go back upstairs because … because … He descends further. When he reaches the bottom, there’s a dark hallway, only dimly lit by a light source he can’t see, and there are glass cages to either side. Howard Stark stands in one them, his clenched fists hammering against the glass, his face screwed up in feral rage as he screams his son’s name. Odin is in another, sitting on a chair, braiding Frigga’s hair who sits below his feet like a dog, her eyes half-closed, her smooth face mouthless. Hela is another and their nanny Amora in yet another, both of them trying to smother a small, howling baby with a red pillow.

Thor lets out a scream but even though his lips open, no sound comes out and tears spring to his eyes as he runs, trying to get to the end of the corridor, trying to save his brother, _must save Loki_ , _must_ _protect him at all costs_ , _can’t fail_.

Loki is in a cage at the far end and he’s sitting on the floor, his legs crossed, his tiny toddler face pinched in concentration over assembling a giant jigsaw puzzle.

“Loki!” Thor hollers, banging against the pane. “Loki! I’m here!”

“No, you’re not,” says Nikias, who suddenly appears behind Loki, appearing out of thin air, his eyes burning with rage, black irises surrounded by fire that flickers in shades of red and green. “You’ve never been _here_.”

“No, I … I,” Thor gasps, tears welling into his eyes. “I _tried_ to be!”

“But, still, you’re too late,” says Nikias and then he picks Loki’s tiny body up, pressing him against his chest like a loving father and, suddenly, Loki disappears into his frame, almost as if Nikias swallowed him whole, and then Nikias too disappears, vanishing in a cloud of black smoke.

Thor stares at the jigsaw puzzle they left behind and cries tonelessly until the dim lights go out and the chilly breeze picks up again, creeping under his shirt and, then, he hears Loki scream again, _Help me_ , _brother_ , _where are you_ , and he hears Hela laugh and he hears Nikias laugh and—

Thor startles awake, panting, screaming.

Screaming like a fucking child until a nurse bolts into the room, trying to shush him. “What is it? Are you in pain?”

“No,” Thor whimpers even though he is in pain, and probably will be for a while, but that’s not the kind of pain that’s bothering him. “I mean yes but …”

The nurse fumbles with one of the switches and administers a dose of morphine before placing her hand on the top of his head. “It’s going to be alright,” she whispers in a motherly tone.

“I, uh,” Thor gulps. “Can you … call my mother?”

“It’s almost midnight and visiting hours are long over,” she says in an apologetic tone. “She’ll be here in the morning. Just try to go back to sleep, okay? Try to relax.”

 _Of course_ , thinks Thor. _Because returning to that dream is surely gonna be totally relaxing_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do you just wanna grab Hela by the shoulders and shake some sense back into her? You're not the only one, believe me, but addiction has a will of its own and she's pretty far gone *sighs*
> 
> And some of you probably screamed all the way through the first part, which is fine because I did too. Not all the way through, of course, because, obviously, I had writing to do but Loki is pretty unhinged and his self-preservation skills are practically non-existent.
> 
> And Nikias, well, he surely made one hell of a mess, didn't he?


	11. A horribly filthy solution

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hela makes a decision that isn't stupid for a change, Thor slips back into old habits and Thanos makes Loki breakfast.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You might have guessed it, we're about to learn what happened to Loki, at least in flashbacks, so brace yourselves.
> 
> [ongoing tw for suicidal thoughts]
> 
> [tw vomit]

Hela doesn’t know what time it is when she wakes up. It’s still dark outside or maybe it’s dark again but that’d mean she slept more than twenty-four hours and it definitely doesn’t feel as if she slept twenty-four hours. More like twenty-four minutes, give or take. She is tired as hell. Everything hurts. Her throat is parched, her tongue a piece of dried, shriveled flesh glued to her gum. Her head is pounding. Her organs hurt more than they ever did before but, then again, that’s what she thinks every morning when sleep releases her. She can taste blood on her tongue, vomit. She is hungry and nauseous at the same time.

It’s six a.m. and she’s still not dead. That is probably the worst thing.

She scrambles out of bed, stumbles into the bathroom and almost slips off the toilet seat when she tries to sit down with the fine motor skills of a newborn cub, having to steady herself against the shower wall to avoid crashing headfirst onto the floor tiles. Whew, this is getting exponentially worse. Is exponentially even a word? And does it mean what she thinks it means? _No idea_. She has to throw up again while she pees and the undigested rest of the three sandwiches she devoured last night land between her feet with a splash, the puke sprinkling against her ankles.

It’s a shame, really, and such a waste, to die in your early thirties.

 _A pitiful sight_.

She dimly remembers that her boyfriend was there, bringing her the sandwiches, telling her that there was no sign of the kid.

No reason to hold on anymore. It’s weird, isn’t it, that the messed-up little brat with his terrifying mood swings and annoying nightly outbursts actually turned into a reason to hold on somewhere along the way despite tearing her nerves apart all the time. But now he’s gone because she tried to kill him in a withdrawal-induced frenzy and she has nothing left.

She’s even worse than her own mother. At least, Angie never tried to choke her to death. She just conveniently closed her eyes whenever her last fuckbuddy got rough with Hela but she never laid hands on her herself. Angie never got so high that she forgot there _was_ a kid in the house. Angie never tried to make her stop crying by putting her hands over her mouth and nose. Angie never asked Hela do her work for her. No, she’s worse than her mother ever was. She’s _the_ fucking worst. Fucked-up addict whore. She almost killed her own child twice. She doesn’t deserve to live, not even like this.

The two bottles of gin are still in the fridge. If she inhales them now, she won’t have to wake up ever again. She’ll be blissfully numb, with no dying, hurting, failing body attached to her brain. She’ll be free, finally free.

Hela pulls her pants up and staggers to her feet, wobbling towards the kitchenette. She opens the fridge with trembling hands, unscrews the cap from the first bottle and brings it to her lips. Her hands are shaking so badly that the booze spills onto her shirt and onto the floor.

She tries to keep her grip on the bottle even though her limbs no longer really obey her because, _holy fucking hell_ , she can beat the fucking Grim Reaper to it if she just inhales the two fifths. She doesn’t have to endure this excruciatingly long and painful death. She doesn’t have to—

 _You’re lonely too_ , _aren’t you_?

Fuck me.

 _I think you need a hug too_.

Fuck the kid.

 _I hope you get well soon_.

Fuck Frigga for keeping the little psycho.

 _Fuck everything_.

And then, out of nowhere, there comes a clear thought. Her boyfriend lied to her. He knows exactly where the kid is.

Hela lets go of the bottle and it crashes to the floor, breaking into a thousand pieces, spilling liquid onto the tiles. She turns on the faucet and splashes water into her face, trying to wake herself up. Then, she stumbles back into her bedroom, searching for a duffel bag. She mindlessly throws some clothes in there, puts on her wig and gathers the most important things from the bathroom. When she leaves the bathroom, her eyes land on George, the stuffed elephant, who’s lying face-down on the couch in her studio and, on a sudden impulse, she grabs this one too before she searches for her phone. She finds it on the couch where she left it the previous night before she crawled over to the fridge like a starved rodent in search of food scraps. She picks it up with trembling hands, picks up her charger too, before grabbing her keys and her wallet, finally staggering out of the apartment.

On some level, she is aware how dangerous it is to sit down behind a wheel like this but, then again, if she hesitates too long, she might change her mind again. Her hunger for drugs and oblivion might change her mind again. She gets into her car in the clothes she slept in, clothes reeking of gin and vomit, throwing the duffel bag and the elephant onto the passenger seat, and starts the engine, her fingers still shaking.

Hollywood Detox Center is only about four miles away. A ten-minute drive if traffic is smooth. She can make it, even in her fucked-up state. She can focus long enough to get there. She brought herself to focus in the past, even when it seemed impossible.

She can do it.

 _Look_ , _let me help you get into rehab and maybe_ —

Maybe she still has a chance to save her kid if she gets there without a scratch and they let her in even without insurance, helping her sober up enough to confront Thanos, who is _not_ and has _never_ been her goddamn boyfriend, for fuck’s bloody sake.

* * *

Frigga instantly knows that something is wrong when she walks into Thor’s hospital room around eight in the morning. He’s lying on his back, staring at the ceiling, the breakfast on the tray placed over his belly untouched, his face pinched in anguish. His hair is ruffled and sweaty, his breathing labored.

“Good mor—”

“I didn’t tell you everything,” Thor blurts out in a whisper before she can finish her greeting, his gaze remaining glued to the ceiling. “About what happened in the cabin.”

Frigga swallows because everything he did tell her was already unsettling enough.

“Loki told me—I mean, technically it was Leah who told me,” Thor begins as she sits down and Frigga chooses not to interrupt him even if she wants to when he drops the yet unfamiliar name. “I thought it was Loki who told me he didn’t even want to go swimming when we arrived at the cabin, so I asked him why the hell he’d want to go to either the beach or the lake if he didn’t even wanna swim. Later, I figured that it might be because of the scars and wounds on his arms but maybe Leah can’t swim, which is likely, right, because she’s a toddler. Anyway, Loki—Leah—told me that she didn’t wanna hang out at home because …” His voice begins to crack and Frigga begins to guess where he is going. “Because … bad things happened in the house.”

 _He also told me that Loki was abused as a child_.

_Did Loki confide that to him?_

_I suppose so. I mean, how else would he know, right?_

Well, apparently, it was not Loki himself but his toddler self, who is a girl called Leah?! Frigga pushes all the questions pouring into her mind away to focus on Thor, who is visibly chewing on his next words. “It’s okay, honey. You can tell me.” _I already know_.

“I asked him— _her_ , _dammit_ —what kind of things, if someone touched her or hurt her, and she panicked and shook her head and said she wasn’t supposed to talk about it because it’d get her in trouble and, I mean, she didn’t say they were abused but … I mean … The way it sounds …” He stops, bewildered, his gaze searching for hers. “Why aren’t you more shocked?”

“Tony already told me,” she admits.

“Wait, Tony told you that I told him that Loki was abused?” Thor’s eyes go wide. “What else did you guys talk about while I was out? And why didn’t you assail me with questions about it as soon as I opened my eyes?”

His words sting despite the fact that Frigga knows she only fairly recently understood how exactly she neglected Thor and she didn’t come to that understanding without help. _It seems to me_ , the grief counselor said to her a while ago, _as if you’re only just now remembering that Thor needs you too_ , _always has_ , _always will_. _You’re his mother_. Frigga knew then that she needed to give Thor time to heal and focus on him as an individual person with his own pain instead of constantly regarding him as Loki’s older brother. “Because your recovery had a higher priority,” says Frigga. “I can no longer change the past, so I focused on the present.”

Thor gazes at her as if she was a stranger, his eyebrows hiking towards his hairline. “Who are you and where’s my Mom?” He blows out a breath, a half-smirk creeping onto his lips. “Seriously. I wanna talk to my Mom. You know, that woman who was totally crazy about my baby brother and would have—”

She ruffles through his hair. “Stop it.”

A small laugh escapes his lips and it’s a beautiful sound. Such a beautiful sound. But then, he turns serious again. “I don’t know who did it though.”

“Tony said it was your nanny?”

“Leah didn’t say. It was just a speculation when I talked to Tony. I mean, isn’t it often the nanny or the babysitter in your cases? I just figured … I don’t know. I completely forgot how she looked like though until she appeared in my dream last night,” says Thor. “Well, actually, it was a nightmare and it was pretty fucked up.” He harrumphs. “Messed up, sorry. I saw all sorts of people hurting other people and Nikias just … He stole Loki away and blamed me for …” His voice trembles. “He still blames me for abandoning Loki. That’s why he hates me.”

“‘You all failed at protecting him’,” Frigga repeats her not-quite-son’s words from that night. “‘It’s my turn now.’ That’s what he said, right?” Her mind is slowly beginning to piece at least the edges of the puzzle together. “So, every time I thought it was Loki who pushed us away, it actually was Nikias. But why? To what purpose?”

“I don’t know …” At this, his voice breaks. “I can’t believe he’s still out there …”

“Don’t do that to yourself,” whispers Frigga as she strokes over his head even though she did the same thing to herself for weeks, blaming herself, overanalyzing every conversation, wondering what she could’ve done differently in order to prevent Loki’s—Nikias’s—outburst. “This is only going to eat you alive.”

“But if I don’t come rescue him, Nikias will be right. He’ll use my failure—”

“With all due respect to your brother’s coping mechanisms,” Frigga gasps, “but Nikias is insane, honey. He hijacked your car to provoke you into hurting who you thought was Loki at the time just to demonstrate to Loki that you’re a bad brother. He almost killed you on that highway and then he almost killed you again with that shard. If he were an actual person that lives outside Loki’s body, a friend from school, would you let him manipulate you in the same way?”

“He isn’t manipulating _me_ , mother. I know he’s wrong but Loki doesn’t know this and, since I have no way of walking into Loki’s head, I have to … I have to …”

“You have to rest, honey,” Frigga murmurs, trying to calm him with her touch.

“Rest,” spits Thor. “Y’all be like ‘oh rest’ and ‘please relax’. How am I supposed to fucking relax, Mom? _How_?”

Frigga sighs because here comes the phase she’s been dreading. Before she can say anything, though, anger flares up in Thor’s eyes and he wipes the breakfast off his tray, sending the plates crashing to the floor, a string of expletives exploding out of his mouth.

“Interesting,” comes a voice from the door. “It seems we arrived just in time.”

* * *

Loki looks so innocent when he’s asleep, thinks Thanos as he enters the guest bedroom, so perfectly innocent, his angelic features like smooth porcelain. Oh, how badly he wants to touch that face himself. It’s one of the prettiest faces he’s ever seen—and he’s seen a lot of pretty faces in his life. A lot of seraphic features with bright, beautiful, wide-open eyes gazing at him, longing for something to dull their pain, begging him for emotional relief. Which is what he does, what he provides. What he provided for Elena for the longest time. She used to have a pretty face too and Thanos can see where Loki got his looks from, even if there isn’t much of El’s pale, fragile beauty left. She’s pallid now, looking no less healthier than a corpse on most days and reeking a bit more of death every day. It’s hard to see her like this now and even harder to touch her but, even so, he can’t let her go because he has to be there for her until the end, providing an escape until he can finally be sure she’ll no longer suffer.

That is what he does. He puts people out of their misery in return for their services because some people carry so much misery with them that they won’t ever have a life worth living because their pain is simply too intense to process it without chemical assistance.

He watches Loki sleep, watches the kid’s thin lips twitch, soundlessly moving to the rhythm of his dreams.

Loki isn’t there yet, of course. He’s still young, still hopeful that there might be more to life than the filthy reality he came from even if there isn’t.

No, Thanos has been in business long enough to know that, for a drug addict’s offspring, there usually isn’t because history tends to repeat itself.

Always has, always will.

He refrains from sitting down, from touching him. He can’t jump the gun on this kid because, even if Loki came onto him before, strongly came onto him whenever El was too far gone to intervene, he backpedaled after Thanos took him to the house for the first time. Something in his behavior changed abruptly because, apparently, it was all a game to him, which is understandable on some level, because Loki grew up in the very definition of a sheltered upper class home after El gave him up for adoption. He has no idea what the real world looks like, what festering sickness society conceals behind a perfectly constructed façade of civilization, law and order. Has no clue what happens if you ask the wrong kind of people for trouble.

That doesn’t mean it’s not frustrating, though, and Thanos still curses himself for having lost his temper at the dinner table, calling Loki a whore’s bastard child. He really needs to learn to control his more aggressive side if he wants to earn the kid’s trust because Loki is a tough nut to crack. He’s longing to numb himself, _yes_ , he’s vulnerable and lost, _also yes_ , but nevertheless he’s a fighter and, on top of that, he’s impossibly smart, and Thanos has enough life experience to know when he shouldn’t underestimate someone. Not even a troubled teenage boy with the face of an angel.

 _All in due time_ , Thanos tells himself, trying to bring his urges under control, because the kid was astonishingly compliant last night. Hell, just as Thanos assumed, he _enjoyed_ it. His beautiful green eyes lit up, a twisted, guilty pleasure flickering through them, and he even begged for more after Thanos called it a night.

He needs to take it slow.

He’ll get there.

He clears his throat, making his presence known.

* * *

Loki rolls over in bed when a deep voice wishes him a good morning, slowly opening his eyes. He feels as if he slept for a month but even so, he is still tired. So tired, so exhausted. Again, he needs a few moments to remember where he is and why he is there.

“Slept alright?” asks Thanos, the smile on his face no longer that of a predator as he places a tray with blueberry pancakes beside Loki on the bed. “I made you breakfast. El told me you liked those.”

He doesn’t, not particularly. It’s Leah who likes blueberries.

Loki gulps and thanks him anyway.

“Somehow, you are different than before.” Thanos reaches for Loki’s hair again, twisting it around his finger. For some reason that creep is really, really fixated on Loki’s hair. Maybe because he’s bald. _Ha_.

“Yeah, well,” Loki begins as he wraps the thick blanket tighter around himself because he is cold too, so cold, but it’s not because of the temperature. It’s because of a cold that comes from within and seeps into his bones, spreading out from some frozen core he never noticed before today. “My brother used to say that my mental state varies from moment to moment.”

 _Brother … Hold on_ , _what brother_?

Thanos grins. “Well, I like you better when you’re like this, that’s for sure.”

Which isn’t difficult, of course, because Nikias is a spiteful, violent son of a bitch. Child of a bitch, whatever. For a second, Loki wonders who Nikias’s mother is, if he has parents at all, how he was born, how he came into this world.

“Come on, aren’t you hungry?” asks Thanos, trying to peel him out of the covers but as soon as he takes the blanket away, a shiver runs through Loki’s entire body and he instinctively grabs it back, rolling himself into a ball, disappearing under the sheets.

“I asked you if you were hungry,” Thanos says, tugging at him, raising his voice the tiniest little bit.

“I am cold,” Loki whispers back.

“You can go back to sleep after you ate your breakfast,” Thanos tells him and just like that, the predator is back. Apparently, Loki isn’t the only one whose mental state varies from moment to moment even though, with Thanos, the changes are pretty easily explained. He doesn’t like to be rejected. Keep him happy and he’s nice to you. Very straight-forward.

Loki sits up despite feeling so unbearably cold, the wounds on his torso stinging as he eats his breakfast under Thanos’s watchful eyes, praising the food for good measure. Thanos smiles at him when he’s finished, placing a hand on Loki’s head. “You can get some more rest now, if you want. You deserve it.”

“Thank you,” Loki chokes out and Thanos leaves him alone then, the door softly clicking shut behind him.

Loki carefully lifts his shirt, his fingers tracing the fresh wounds on his chest and belly. They’ve barely begun to scab and the edges are a little ragged here and there. They hurt and they’ll probably rip back open if he makes one sudden movement but, still, Loki feels a grateful smile stealing onto his lips. _A solution indeed_. A horribly filthy solution, disgraceful and disgusting, and yet … Loki enjoyed it. He enjoyed it so much that he felt a hot surg _e_ of blood rushing through his entire body straight to his groin, a dizzying excitement he never experienced before. He enjoyed it so much that he softly begged the guy nick-named Maw— _moronic name_ , _isn’t it_?—to continue even after Thanos said it was enough.

 _Filthy piece of trash_ , _whoring yourself out_ , _just like your biological mother and grandmother_ , _and for what_? _For a nice, warm bed_? _For expensive food and a little recognition_ , _a few pats on the head_? _For someone who wants you around despite the fact that you’re so fucking messed up_? _For drugs and booze_?

Thanos doesn’t want him because of who Loki is as a person. He knows this, of course. He might be a freak and a psycho but he isn’t delusional. Thanos is a drug dealer who’s very obviously involved with pornography and all he cares about is that he’ll make money off of Loki’s delicate face, his slender built, off of this Maw guy whipping him on camera, making him scream and groan, begging him to stop, begging him to keep going.

 _You sick little fuck_.

 _You can’t ever look Frigga in the eye again after what you did last night_.

Who is Frigga?

“I wasn’t the one who started it though,” Loki replies softly because, suddenly, his inner voice isn’t just his inner voice anymore. No, someone is there. “Nikias?”

There is a long pause before, finally, he receives an answer— _What_?—from inside his mind. Relief and dread flood through him in equal measure. “What did you do?” Loki whispers.

 _No_ , _the question is_ , _what did **you** do_?

Loki gasps. “You shut me out for almost a month. You—”

 _I didn’t shut you out_ , _fuckface_ , snarls Nikias. _You bolted_ , _remember_?

Of course, Loki remembers. He retreated to that lovely space where he was safe and protected and where no harm could come to him, where no emotions, no memories, no thoughts could ever reach him. He tries to shake off the thought. “Why did you even … why are we even …” There are so many questions to ask and so few words available to word them appropriately.

 _What_?

“You got involved with Thanos, didn’t you?” Loki whispers, his throat suddenly too dry to swallow. “He threatened to hurt my mother”— _why would he hurt Hela?_ —“because I apparently tried to bail on him even though I wasn’t the one who …” _Who_ _did_ _what_ , _exactly_? Loki has no idea. “I never made any … What did you _do_? Tell me! Tell me now!”

There’s no answer and Loki can visualize Nikias shrug his shoulders, a grim expression on his pale, black-eyed face.

“You hate Thor because he wasn’t there for me?” Loki asks, a desperate tremor creeping into his voice even though the name Thor only means something on a very vague, subconscious, emotional level to him now. He knows Thor is important but he doesn’t know why. “Even though you got us into some sort of relationship with Thanos? Hela never wanted us to get involved with him! You flirted with him and now I have to … You’re the worst! You’re the one who hurt me the worst!”

 _If you say so_.

“What am I supposed to do now?” Loki whispers, suddenly overwhelmed by utter soul-crushing loneliness, yearning for love, counsel, guidance. “Where are the others? Why am I always alone?”

It’s a good question, isn’t it, since not even The Voice, who bragged about how his “sole purpose” was to protect Loki, did do shit when Nikias stepped out of line. But then again, The Voice only ever protected him in school and Loki hasn’t been to school in forever.

 _You do whatever you think is right because it’s about time_ _you prove that you can survive by yourself_ , says Nikias and then he’s gone again, leaving Loki to himself, to an all-consuming mental desolation. His thoughts scatter into a thousand different directions, whirling through his mind for a moment, leaving his brain enshrouded in a whitish mist. When he can finally think again, he senses that something is different, even though, maybe not, because he’s still with Thanos, his Mom’s filthy, drug-dealing, porn-shooting creep of a boyfriend because she’s still in the hospital after drugging herself into a fucking frenzy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve been asked if this is ever gonna get better *coughs* Eventually, yes, because I like to put my favorite characters through tremendous pain but I also like fragile happy endings, so.
> 
> I'm going to explain a bit what happened inside Loki's mind, so if you want to figure it out for yourself as you read along, then stop reading here, please.
> 
> What I’ve been trying to do for the past two chapters is to show how Loki’s mind works and how it dissociates, which, in this case, was a gradual process. Not that I am an expert in any way but I’ve done a lot of research and what a lot of sources can seem to agree upon is that every dissociative disorder is different and every system is different because every mind is different and every person has their individual traumas that require individual coping strategies. So, what happened in this case was that Loki told himself he couldn’t go back to his family but that thought was unbearable of course because he can’t function without Frigga. In order to protect him from having to deal with the traumatic experience of being abandoned, he slowly pushed them out of his mind, erected an amnesia wall around their existence, until he subconsciously created a state of consciousness in which they don’t exist anymore. That doesn’t mean that he forgot them, of course, but the part that remembers them is, for now, separated from his consciousness.
> 
> That said, with Christmas around the corner, I don't know when the next update will be ready but I wanna wish everyone a few relaxing days after this horror trip of a year <33 
> 
> See you soon x


	12. Forever wouldn't be long enough

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor proves that he's far more perceptive than anyone gave him credit for. First, he has to cool off though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's no description or flashback of anything related to drug dealing, prostitution, pornography or any other of Thanos' various occupations in this chapter, not even in flashbacks. There's violence though because, well, it's me. There is Odin, too, which is always worth a trigger warning.
> 
> And, mind you, the presence or the absence of the infamous major character death has meaning. Just saying ;)

Except that Hela isn’t in the hospital. She’s sitting in a room that looks welcoming enough, at least what she can still see of it with her vision as blurry as it is, but is still a room in a lame ass detoxification facility and there’s her so-called case manager— _why don’t they just say sponsor_ , _godfuckingdammit_ —and there’s a physician, asking her questions to get an idea of her medical history. Nurses are measuring her heartrate, her blood pressure, take her blood for testing, or whatever it is they’re doing, bustling about her, touching her, their speech fuzzy, words fading in and out. They start shouting at her at some point, snapping a finger in front of her face.

She wants to reply, tries to find the words, but it’s incredibly difficult to focus after wasting the last of her physical and mental resources on driving herself here without an accident. Well, not entirely, but bumping into road signs and dumpsters don’t count as real accidents, in Hela’s opinion.

“Miss Morrison!”

Why are they calling her … Oh, right …

 _Focus_.

 _Just focus_.

They start talking to each other then, their voices shriller, borderline hysterical. They throw fancy terms like delirium around as doctors always do but it really is incredibly difficult to focus. Incredibly impossible, actually. _Subacute Medically Monitored Detoxification_ , said the flyer. Maybe, it’s a bit more than subacute in her case, she thinks, but, then again, she isn’t sure if the word means what she thinks it means. Is acute the same as accurate? She has no idea. Someone sticks something into her arm, slaps something onto her face.

There’s a pillow under her head.

When did she lie down?

Does it matter?

Nope, not at all. Not at all because sleep is nice. Unconsciousness is nice. Death is nice.

Maybe she’ll finally get to the deepest point this time.

* * *

“Who are you?” Thor bristles at the two people who just strode into the room without knocking even though it’d be obvious to even a blind person that they’re law enforcement, which means he should really, really reign in his temper. He fails miserably because Frigga telling him to rest even though she had an entire fucking month to adjust to all this shit was just too fucking much. He basically just woke up to a reality in which his baby brother is missing, out there on his own, with no one but Nikias as fucking guidance, his best friend has been beaten up by his shithead asshole dad and his own parents have filed for divorce all while he was comatose and it’s too fucking much. Mainly because he knows he can’t change or fix either one of those things. He can’t even raise his fucking left arm at the moment, can’t even sit up straight or go to the goddamn bathroom. He’s completely helpless and it drives him almost insane.

“My name is Detective Coulson, Crimes against Youth and Family squad, LVMPD,” says the guy before gesturing to the woman. “This is Maria Hill from Child Protective Services, who’s mainly here as an observer.”

“CPS?” Thor echoes, his anger erupting in the pit of his stomach like a volcano, threatening to plunge him into an intense rage that would result in him trashing the whole room and tearing down the walls with his bare hands if he could actually get up. But as it is, the anger is just there, boiling, making his temples go hot. He flicks a glare at his Mom, who sports an expression of thinly veiled frustration but not surprise, no, _of course not_ , because she didn’t pass out a month ago and knows what the fuck has been going on but didn’t bother to fucking tell him about CPS being involved in this whole ordeal. He blows out a breath, tries to control himself, before he focuses his attention back on the Coulson-Hill duo with their black suits and white shirts and unreadable faces. “What the hell does CPS want from us?”

If he weren’t so furious, he might come up with the answer himself.

Coulson grabs a chair and sits without asking for permission. Hill remains standing, casually leaning against the wall next to Frigga. “I’m going to record this conversation, if that is alright with you,” says the detective as he fishes out his phone, swiping across the screen.

Thor grinds his teeth so fiercely that they crunch because he knows he can’t decline, which is another thing that adds fuel to the blazing flames of his rage.

“This is Detective Phil Coulson interviewing Thor Odinson on the twenty-ninth of October, 2019, eight forty-three a.m. Present in the room are the victim’s mother, Frigga Fjörgyndottir, and child services investigator Maria Hill. Mr. Odinson, You have the right to—”

“Whoa wait,” Thor cuts in, his heartbeat picking up speed. “Were you just gonna Mirandize me? Do you want me to give my witness statement or is this an interrogation?” He glares at the cop and for the first time in, well, ever he’s glad that he’s going to law school.

“I’d say a bit of both,” Coulson begins. “Look, we know what happened between you and your adopted brother. We know—”

“Let me stop you right there,” Thor hisses. “Loki isn’t my _adopted_ brother. He’s my brother, _period_.”

Maria Hill looks like she’s making a mental note but Thor can’t tell whether it’s gonna put him in a positive or a negative light. He realizes he doesn’t care a whole fucking lot.

“We know about the injuries you inflicted on your brother prior to him stabbing you a month ago,” Coulson goes on, unperturbed, “which raises the question whether or not Loki might have acted in self-defense.”

“Self-defense?” comes from Frigga, who’s been astonishingly quiet until now. “Thor didn’t—”

“I can speak for myself, Mom,” Thor snaps, his vision going almost white, which has the unfortunate consequence that he doesn’t think before he speaks and says things he doesn’t even remotely mean. “I don’t fucking believe this! I lost it once and laid hands on Loki and that wasn’t okay. It was horrible and I apologized immediately.” He half-scoffs, half-sobs, a strange, pitiful noise. “You don’t have any fucking clue how much I’m still beating myself up about what happened, okay? Instead, you waltz in here and treat me as a fucking suspect even though _I_ was the one who got stabbed by that little screwball? Fuck you!” Well, he knows that it was his fault that Nikias stabbed him—despite what Frigga said, he knows it, _deep down he does_ —but not in the way this guy just implied it was. _That fucking jerk_! And how does everything Loki and disaster-related always end up being Thor’s goddamn fault somehow? How is this fucking fair in any fucking way?

“Your temper also raises the question,” Hill steps in, observer or not, “whether or not it is safe for Loki to live with you after—”

“I don’t even live at home anymore,” Thor bristles, suddenly oblivious to both the fact that he’s being recorded and the inconsolable expression on Frigga’s face in response to his notably absent anger management skills. “And my Mom apparently filed for divorce, so my Dad won’t be in the picture anymore either, I guess, which means that she’ll be alone with Loki when he comes back and that’s super fucking safe because her whole world has always been revolving around caring for him!” He chokes on that last bit partly because he knows his words are blisteringly unfair on Frigga—her face looks pained when he dares to flit a quick glance at her, too—but mainly because his mind substituted the ‘when’ in his statement with an ‘if’ and that’s impossible to stomach without tears welling into his eyes.

He blinks them away.

“I think we should all calm down,” says Maria Hill.

 _Yeah_ , _right_. They all make it sound so fucking easy. _Fucking assholes_.

“Why don’t you tell us what happened that Sunday?” asks Coulson.

Thor really doesn’t want to because even if his rage keeps him from breaking down, he can feel his chest constrict at the thought of the fucking incident— _nice going_ , _Mom_ , _really nice going_ —and his godawful nightmare. But, still, he knows that he has to, and so he takes another deep breath, which is pretty damn useless really, and starts with, “Loki, uh, he found out he was adopted the Friday before.”

He briefly tells them the story from the moment he met Hela on the parking lot up until they broke down the news to Loki after Hela showed up on their doorstep and Odin caused another breakdown with his dismissive attitude and blatant lack of tact after they almost got through to his brother. “He, uh, regressed after it happened.”

At that, Frigga draws a sharp breath.

“Regressed?” echoes Coulson. “What does that mean?”

Thor searches for his mother’s eyes, confusion inevitably leading to more anger washing over him. “Didn’t you tell them?”

Frigga swallows a little too audibly.

“Tell us what?” asks Coulson.

“My brother has multiple personalities,” Thor concedes quietly and voicing that in the presence of a judgmental asshole cop makes him feel like absolute shit.

Coulson stares at him as if he lost his mind for a moment before he turns his head and glowers at Frigga. “That’s not what his therapist said.” His face is all narrowed eyes and pinched forehead. “And isn’t it curious that _you_ forgot to mention that as well, Mrs. Fjörgyndottir?” He pauses for emphasis alone, _that little asshole_ , and Thor can feel a new spark of anger erupt from the pit of his stomach because his Mom apparently remained trapped in her old ways after all, embellishing ugly-sounding labels because that’s what Odin Borson’s pretentious ableist family has always done because _WHAT WILL THE PEOPLE THINK?!_

“She told you that Loki was suffering from a dissociative disorder,” Frigga replies, not in the least bit defensive though. “He hasn’t been officially diagnosed with anything yet, I’m afraid. Not to mention that I addressed Nikias in my press statement,” she continues, suddenly all kick-ass lawyer even though she’s never practiced law herself and no longer crumbling, grieving Mom. “Never, at any point during this investigation, did I withhold any information from you, sir.”

 _Huh_.

“He hasn’t been officially diagnosed yet?” Coulson repeats, smoothly ignoring the unvoiced accusation Frigga threw at him, his unreadable mask of a face finally slipping a little as his eyes flit back to Thor. “Then why are _you_ diagnosing him? Do you think you have more expertise than a trained professional or what’s going on here?”

“What’s going on here is that Loki has been mentally ill for a long time and we all struggled to find out exactly how,” Frigga chimes in, anger vibrating from her own slightly flushed cheeks now. “Maybe not in the best way because we didn’t realize until very recently how urgently he needed therapeutic care but Thor _always_ did his best to take care of his brother and when things escalated, he—”

“For God’s sake! Will you just let me _speak_ , mother?” Thor snarls. “I’m sure you had plenty of opportunities to get your point across while I was knocked out cold for four fucking weeks straight! Isn’t this supposed to be kinda _my_ turn?”

He didn’t mean to raise his voice—does he ever—and his mother, if ever so subtly, flinches from his tone. “I’m sorry, honey,” mumbles Frigga as CPS investigator Maria Hill whips out a small, dreadfully outdated leather-bound notebook. “Please, go on.”

Thor huffs because he doesn’t quite know how to actually go on now that he’s back in the spotlight, with Coulson eying him in his hospital bed in all his crippled, immobile glory and Hill frantically scribbling into her fucking notebook with a pen. _Who the hell still uses pens these days_? He clears his throat, clears it twice, no, thrice actually. _Dammit_ , he is in law school, isn’t he? He should be able to fucking give a statement without going postal or losing his fucking nerves. The only problem is that he hates law school and doesn’t care one bit for the faked, performed composure in the courtroom his Dad so thoroughly enjoys. Plus, he’s hungry, which is his own fault really because he threw his breakfast onto the floor, and has no clue what’s been going on around him for a whole fucking month.

“I’m not trying to diagnose my brother, Detective,” Thor begins quietly when he trusts himself enough to speak without losing his shit again, “and I don’t know if multiple personalities is still a correct psychological term these days but what I do know is that it wasn’t Loki who stabbed me and it wasn’t Loki whose collarbone I splintered. The person who hurt me and who I hurt is _not_ my brother. His name, as you might have gathered from my Mom, is Nikias. And when I came back from my game on Sunday afternoon—I play football for the UNLV Rebels, in case you didn’t know, and was in Wyoming over the weekend—Loki was still Leah, his child personality or whatever you wanna call it, but then Hela arrived and he changed back into Loki and then into Nikias. There was a lot of fighting, a lot of screaming, because Loki was still upset about being adopted. He was even more upset about his biological mother being a hooker and a drug addict, who got knocked up by a john and then threw him away like a piece of garbage only to come back sixteen years later to ask for a fucking tissue donation because she has cancer. Imagine that.”

Finally, the anger subsides, but it’s replaced by sadness and despair that are even harder to handle. “Loki was upset, of course. He told Hela to go to hell and stormed off to his room, where he shattered his mirror with bare fists to cut himself, which, I think, was totally understandable because he’s been doing it before when he was stressed out. He’s been doing it for a long time, by the looks of it.”

Thor briefly looks at his mother, whose face reflects nothing but raw pain. “But, since my Dad is the unparalleled champion of making Loki worse,” he continues, tearing his eyes away from Frigga, “he didn’t really get or maybe he didn’t care what was going on and chose that moment to tell Loki he was gonna send him to a psych ward. He went all go-pack-your-bags-we’re-gonna-send-you-away-right-now on him, which is what tipped him over the edge. He asked me if he could live with me, Loki that is, and I fucking hesitated and then …” Tears creep into his voice, clawing at his throat. “It all went so fast, I don’t … I don’t remember if Dad went down first because of his heart attack or if Loki changed into Nikias first but I, uh, I … He suddenly had that shard from the broken mirror in his hand and …” _Breathe_ , _just breathe_. _It can’t be that hard_. It is, though. It’s incredibly hard. “I tried to talk him down but he just stabbed me anyway and then he left and now he’s …”

 _He’s gone_. _He’s out there_ , _all by himself_. _He might be dead by now_. Tears well into Thor’s eyes and, when he can’t blink them away this time, he wipes them away with his right hand. “He’s gone. I don’t know what else to tell you.”

Coulson doesn’t look like such a monumental asshole anymore. “Do you have any idea where he might be?”

Thor shakes his head. “Since I suppose you already checked the beach house and the lake cabin, I have no idea. He never went out much. I think … I mean …” More tears come, choking his words, and he looks at his Mom’s blurry face. “Maybe he …” He can’t say it. Or maybe he can. “I think it’s possible that he, uh, he killed himself. He tried to, before.”

Frigga draws a trembling breath, her face suddenly paler than the white walls. Maria Hill places a comforting hand on her upper arm.

“Do you think he could have left for California with his birthmother?” asks Coulson.

Thor thinks about this for a good long while if only to get the image of Loki clawing at his arteries in the cabin bathroom out of his head. “No. I mean, Loki wouldn’t have. Nikias, maybe.” He thinks it over once more, remembers what Nikias said about it being his turn now. “Yes,” he finally says, his voice small and shaky. “I think that’s just what Nikias would have done because he wanted Loki away from us.”

Coulson nods, Frigga looks like she’s about to puke and, then, the room falls silent.

* * *

“The call came from the LA area,” says the voice at the other end of the line. “We couldn’t track it all the way down, though, because it came from a payphone in the Westlake district. I’m sorry, Mr. Borson.”

“I see,” says Odin before he thanks the PI he hired a few weeks ago and ends the call.

At first, he thought nothing of it when the phone rang and no one answered the previous day but his subconscious returned to the incident again several times, convincing him that he’d sensed this eerie sense of familiarity when the person on the other line had drawn a hardly audible breath. Which is why he tasked his people with tracing the call. Because if it was against all odds Loki who called their landline and, what’s even more important, if there was even the shadow of a chance he could actually track down the wayward boy, he could bring him back home. If he did, maybe Frigga would change her mind.

 _Los Angeles_.

LVMPD mentioned the possibility that Loki could have left with Hela after stabbing his brother pretty much from the beginning and, in contrast to his gullible and very much blinded wife, well, unfortunately soon-to-be-ex-wife, Odin never had a doubt that he might have done exactly that. Loki never appreciated their love, after all, and what better way could there be to spite them than to take off head over heels with his birthmother? Knowing Loki, he probably fabricated a twisted tale in that smart, messed-up little head of his about how it would serve them right to worry themselves half to death about him taking off like that after how “poorly” he’s allegedly been treated in Odin’s home while remaining purposefully ignorant to the alternative.

No, Loki never even once thought about just _how goddamn poorly_ he would have been treated by the wrong kind of foster parents, Odin is sure of that. Or by Hela, for that matter, because Hela has been a drug addict for pretty much two decades now, proving time and again that she couldn’t care less about who she hurts in her quest for her next fix.

Odin blows out a breath and buries his face in his hands, kneading his eyebrows, his forehead, the bridge of his nose, trying to get his blood pressure back under control.

 _Oh_ , _Loki_.

 _Why does everything always have to be so difficult with you_ , _boy_?

There’s just no way to reason with that kid, is there?

Well, maybe there is. Odin Borson usually doesn’t make a decision on a whim, except when his temper decides to strike out of nowhere, of course, but that is a different matter. He’d be fairly useless in the courtroom if he didn’t analyze every possible advantage and, even more important, every possible disadvantage of every possible course of action. This time though, he does not think, not much at least.

He thinks about texting Frigga, yes, and his phone is already in his hands even before he finished the thought, screen unlocked, his fingers beginning to type, but then again, he doesn’t want to get her hopes up. She doesn’t deserve to feel hopeful only to have her spirits crushed later. He briefly considers texting her that he’ll spend the next few days out of town but, well, since she divorced him, it’s really none of her business anymore, is it?

Odin sighs before he rises from his chair, packs a bag and calls a cab.

* * *

“Loki!”

 _Oh no_ , _please no_ , he thinks but he can already feel Thanos’s huge meaty hand on his upper arm, shaking him awake, pulling him out of the dream in which this woman with long, dark-blonde wavy hair is holding his hand, her fingers lacing through his, squeezing softly, her curls spilling down her blouse. Loki has no idea who she’s supposed to be and if he wakes now, he may never find out and—

 _Fuck_.

His eyes snap open.

Thanos is towering over him, silhouetted against the dark sky outside the window. “Get up,” he murmurs, peeling the thick, fluffy, warm blanket off Loki, shoving it far out of reach. “You’ve slept for almost twenty hours.” _I could sleep some more_. _A lot more_. _Forever wouldn’t be long enough_. “I want you to meet someone.”

“No,” Loki says on impulse, curling up into a ball because he feels entirely empty—carved out and so very hollow but still somehow trembling at the same time, every atom of his essence buzzing, itching, crawling, like fire ants scuttling all over his naked brain—and yearns for some physical sensation, _any_ physical sensation, to stop his wretched insides from doing what they usually do when he’s upset for no fucking reason whatsoever.

“What did you just say?” Thanos asks, his voice no less threatening than a hurricane looming on the coast.

“I don’t want to meet anyone. Just leave me alone,” Loki whispers and, sure enough, the physical sensation he craves comes immediately because Thanos yanks him upwards, his grip on Loki’s arm violent enough to leave a giant fucking bruise. He really has huge fucking hands. Loki smiles, smirks even. “Sleep is more exciting than whatever you have to offer, I’m sure.”

“You’ll get in the bathroom and make yourself presentable,” Thanos snarls. “You hear me?”

“I want to call my Mom,” Loki blurts out, which seems to take the giant guy aback for the tiniest fraction of a second. Thanos narrows his eyes at him, pale blue eyes alight with rage. “Which one?”

 _What in the fucking hell_?

“In case no one ever told you, you’re not particularly funny,” Loki retorts and, _quelle surprise_ , Thanos delivers instantly, slapping him so hard across the face that he feels his lip split open.

 _Yikes_.

“You get ready,” Thanos spits. “I told you I’m tired of your games.”

“What if I don’t?” Loki asks back, refraining from rubbing his cheek even though his face really, really fucking stings.

Thanos comes nauseatingly close to him, his ginormous hand cupping his jaw, pulling Loki’s face towards him until there’s only a few sickening inches between them. He squeezes hard. Squeezes some more. “You’ll regret it,” he hisses. “Bitterly. How about that?”

Loki gulps. He doesn’t really have a choice here, does he?

Not really, no.

Not unless he wants to be beaten to death. Which doesn’t sound altogether dreadful but still, the rudimentary survival instinct human beings are furnished with is still alive and kicking within him. Well, maybe not actively kicking anymore, but, at the very least, it’s still wretchedly twitching like the limb of a dog dying by the roadside, and it’s enough to propel Loki into action eventually.

He tiptoes into the bathroom to brush his teeth and clean his face and put on some fresh clothes. The long-sleeved shirt Thanos chose for him along with super tight black leather pants with side laces— _you’ve gotta hand it to him_ , _the man’s got taste_ —is black this time too, which is probably for the best since the Maw-inflicted wounds on his belly and chest aren’t fully scabbed yet and one wrong movement will undoubtedly rip them back open. Loki is tempted to try but stops himself when the doorbell rings.

He can hear a female voice outside, well, two distinct female voices, if he isn’t mistaken.

Loki quickly fixes his hair into a bun and flicks one last glance at his reflection in the mirror— _he really needs to buy some make-up and nail polish_ —before he opens the door to face them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now, who are we gonna meet next?


	13. This is where you come from

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki is introduced to the, uh, business. Not in the way Thanos intended though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I said, this chapter gets down to business, so if you don't want to read anything explicit, you might want to skip the second part of this chapter after the first horizontal line and then pick up again with the third part after the second horizontal line. I don't want anyone to get triggered or upset in any way x
> 
> Also there's a dream sequence at the end involving blood and gore.
> 
> I never know if this is spoiling anything but better safe than sorry, eh?

Thanos is right there when he opens the bathroom door, a pleasant smile plastered across his now no longer anger-convulsed face. “Come on, Robin,” he orders and Loki’s heart sinks. “You look great, by the way.”

The whole fake ID business still makes him nervous because Thanos calls him Loki when they’re alone but does he also call his Mom Hela when they’re alone? Suddenly, he isn’t sure if he ever heard him say her real name. He needs to pay attention to these kind of things, _dammit_ , or else he’ll probably get her in trouble and, after her recent outburst, the last thing he wants is to upset her. At least, Robin is a nice enough name since Loki sounds more and more like a stain or a curse anyway. And he still needs to be careful because …

 _Because what_?

He has no fucking clue. But that’s the story of Loki’s life, isn’t it, _oh yes_ , he spends a good amount of his time trying to maneuver himself out of messes he doesn’t even remember making of things on any given day. He hoped that might change now that The Voices are mostly silent but apparently his brain is still malfunctioning because— _no fucking surprise there_ , _actually_ —he’s a crazy ass nutjob freak.

It turns out there are three women after all, which is a bit overwhelming, to say the least, because Loki’s nerves are still stretched so tight he thinks he’ll combust— _he needs to buy a pack of decent razor blades too_ —and he’s still so incredibly, bone-crushingly tired and empty at the same time. It’s a weird feeling, one that, apparently, can’t be punched out of him just like that. It’s a shame but at least he spots scotch on the table, which is hopefully the good stuff and nothing like the cheap brand of gin Hela pours down her throat that burns all the way down to your stomach, shredding the flesh of your throat in the process. Not that Loki likes gin in general or any other drink. For reasons lost to him, he only ever had scotch before …

_Before what?_

He has no fucking clue. _Again_. But it doesn’t matter. The scotch will calm him down. It always does when he’s out of fresh skin to cut into. Loki tries to steer his focus away from cutting and towards the women, who’re all wearing similar black pants and heavy boots and leather jackets over revealing shirts in different colors.

“You were right,” flutes the first of the women, who has a long mane of dark hair that turns red in the middle, hair tips almost pink in the bright light of the ceiling, her eyeshadow and lipstick a bright green. “He _is_ gorgeous.”

Loki chuckles nervously because, for some reason, it feels weird when people appreciate his looks. Not that he’s ugly—he might be this pathetic scrawny little faggot to most people but, at least, he does have a very delicate face with a nice, sharp jawline and nice, sharp cheekbones that are a near perfect incarnation of at least one Western beauty ideal—but it just seems like no one ever really _told_ him before. Not so openly or enthusiastically anyway. “Thank you, I guess?”

“I can’t believe El has such a cute kid,” exclaims the second. She sports one large tuft of blue hair on the left side of her otherwise bald head and Loki wonders when fashion went from undercuts and sidecuts to this particular hairstyle.

“Come on, El used to be cute,” sighs Thanos, his tone mock sad.

“She’d still be if she weren’t dying,” says the third and snickers. She has a septum piercing and dark purple-blue hair, which looks kinda cool, Loki has to admit, and wears heavy smoky eye make-up and dark purple lipstick.

“Yeah, well.” Thanos laughs at that— _he fucking laughs_ —and Loki’s stomach drops when the bastard who regularly bangs his Mom after feeding her the drugs that are killing her puts one hand on his shoulder. “This is Robin. Robin? Meet Gamora, Nebula and Midnight,” says Thanos, gesturing towards the women individually. _These guys are sure as hell something else when it comes to picking street names_. “They’re going to show you around tonight.”

Loki swallows, hoping they can’t hear the nervousness of the sound, and nods. They finally sit down then, though, and Thanos pours them all a scotch, which Loki greedily inhales. And scotch isn’t the only thing he has to offer, it seems. Out of nowhere, Thanos suddenly presents him with a tiny, white pill that looks like a tack in his giant hand. “For you.”

“What is that?” Loki asks even though he has a fairly good idea what it is. “No, let me guess.” he chuckles because Nikias’s consciousness is hovering somewhere close, making him feel a little too rebellious. “It’s an upper because I’m not awake enough for you.”

Midnight sucks some air in through her teeth.

“I’m only trying to do you a favor,” says Thanos. “You are quite tense. Take it or leave it.”

Loki knows he should leave it. Hela is a wretched, puking, paranoid mess after years and years of stuffing herself full of pills and whatever else Thanos supplied her with and he so doesn’t wanna end up like her but, then again, the prospect of ingesting something that makes him feel less itchy is just too damn alluring to ignore. He takes it. Swallows it with a refill of scotch.

 _I really need something to cut myself with if this doesn’t work_.

“Your mother checked into a detox center this morning, by the way,” Thanos tells him as Loki patiently waits for the effects of whatever drug he just swallowed to take effect. “Which means you probably can’t talk to her for a while.”

“Really?” Loki can feel his eyes go wide because that means she might, finally, get out of her misery and he might be able to go back home soon even if this place is far nicer than his mother’s dump of an apartment could ever be. Right now, he finds that he doesn’t feel a burning desire to return because … Well, _because_. “Did she call you?”

“Nope,” grumbles Thanos, his voice like thunder. “She used a credit card for an account that is actually in my name to pay the bill. Anyway, you guys finish up here.” He looks at Midnight, who seems to be the one in charge and isn’t that quite fitting because she seems to be the nastiest. “You have a job to finish and I want you to show him how the business works.”

 _Uh-oh_.

Midnight nods, all square-shouldered determination and dark, angry eyes.

* * *

Unsurprisingly, they end up driving into the shadier parts of town in another Chrysler—or maybe it’s the same Chrysler that brought him there but Loki doesn’t really care anymore. He isn’t high, at least not in the way he thought he’d be after swallowing that pill. He’s just numb. Which would be great if not for the fact that his vision is slightly blurry and the facial expressions of his three female companions are turning increasingly fuzzier. Not that he’s really complaining because experiencing anything through a haze isn’t actually a bad thing. It keeps everything at bay, after all. Lights, sounds, emotions. Thoughts.

And everyone knows that thoughts need to be kept at bay at all times, banished into the lowest reaches of the dark morass lurking deep inside his mind.

The only problem is that Loki would really like to be able to judge what’s going on based on their facial expressions because he has no fucking clue what to expect from this trip, especially when Midnight parks the car, well, _somewhere_ , and Nebula ushers him out of the backseat, dragging him along. There are a lot of girls flaunting their skinny bodies on this dimly-lit sidewalk. Girls who definitely look like hookers. Not that Loki ever saw a hooker in real life before but their short skirts and high heels make those girls look significantly more like hookers than his entourage. Come to think of it, he’s probably their entourage though but that borders on being nitpicky.

Loki doesn’t really get what exactly it is they’re doing here either, not at first, and it irks him. They’re not dealing drugs or chatting anyone up. They just stand motionless for the longest time, observing, which means that he has to stand too, trying not to fall over. It isn’t the easiest task. He doesn’t even bother asking them what’s going on anymore because he always received the same answer on their ride out here.

 _You’ll see_.

Well, Loki doesn’t really see anything anymore. The sight of the city under the LA night sky stretching out in front of him is blurred by the streetlights’ glow and he just wants to roll himself into a ball and crawl back into that bed with its nice, fluffy, thick, warm sheets, sleeping forever. That’s his idea of heaven, really, sleep and endless softness. That, and the woman he saw in his dreams earlier or the floaty space he can’t seem to go back to no matter how hard he tries.

But then, again, the numbness is still endlessly better than the itching and the crawling.

After what seems like an eternity, Gamora finally makes a move, walking towards a girl in impossibly short glittering silver shorts with a black top, which is basically just a bandeaux draped over her boobs. She looks young, Loki’s age probably, maybe even a bit younger, which might alarm him if he was clear in the head.

“It’s alright,” Gamora shushes the girl as they come back towards where Loki is standing with Midnight and Nebula. “You’re gonna earn a lot more with us than you would out here on any given night. And we have something to take the edge off too.” She nods towards Nebula, who fishes a translucent bag out of her pocket.

Loki doesn’t want any part in this, he so, so doesn’t, especially when he sees the girl’s eyes light up greedily, longingly even, her gaze fixed on the pills.

“It’s gonna be alright,” says Midnight. “You can have one in the car.”

Loki briefly wonders what exact kind of edge needs to be taken off for whatever follows but, then again, it’s not his business, is it? He’s only here because his Mom is temporarily indisposed and as soon as she’s on her feet again, he’ll go back to her. Until that happens, they’re here to take care of him, so he just follows them, blindly, pretty much how a dog on a leash would follow its master, and slumps back into the cushions, the girl wedged in between him and Gamora on the backseat. Nebula takes her spot on the passenger seat and Midnight drives, just as she did before.

It’s a longish drive, so long that Loki drifts back into sleep.

When Gamora shakes him awake again, his surroundings aren’t that blurry anymore—he immediately realizes that they’ve just pulled up at _the house_ again—but he’s still in this numb haze that subdues unwanted thoughts or emotions. Which is possibly for the best. No, it’s definitely for the best. The house is empty as the three woman usher Loki and the girl, who’s not at all complaining and doesn’t seem the least bit nervous after swallowing the pill given to her in the car, inside.

“Three,” Midnight announces and slightly pushes him into the second room on the right, switching on the lights, closing the door behind her with a soft click. _Holy hell_. This room looks less welcoming than the one upstairs Loki’s been in before. It’s furnished with dark wallpaper, dimmed fluorescent lights dangling from the ceiling, a single bed in the middle of the room, and, of course, three cameras on their tripods. _No fucking surprise there either_. “My wounds, they haven’t healed yet,” Loki mumbles, his words coming out in a pathetic slur.

“Yeah, don’t worry about that,” says Midnight and it occurs to him then that the guy they call The Maw is nowhere in sight, which is kind of disappointing. But only kind of because, well, he still can’t feel things. “Just lie down.”

Loki does, gladly, because he’s still so fucking tired and even if this bed doesn’t have such thick, cozy sheets, it’s still a bed. He collapses onto it and instinctively rolls to the side, curling himself into a ball.

“No, not like that,” she snaps. “Not all vulnerable and needy and cowering. Lay on your back, left leg straight, the right one slightly …”

Loki doesn’t really like where this is going but, then again, he isn’t _really_ here, _no_ , he feels himself drifting off again, _away_ , _away_ , _away_ , as Midnight rolls him into position, _far_ , _far_ _away_ , _yes_ , _the farther_ , _the better_. She’s instructing him but he no longer knows what a blowjob means and does it even matter. Nothing matters, _no_ , _no_ , _nothing at all_. He is almost asleep. The girl comes back at some point, patting his head, murmuring something along the lines of, “You look tense, baby.”

Loki hums because sleep is pulling him away and isn’t that nice.

“I’m gonna take care of that,” she promises, whatever that means. She strokes his cheek, which feels kinda nice too and he relaxes a little more until, suddenly, she grabs his crotch out of nowhere, squeezing it fiercely, which feels everything but nice because he’s a goddamn virgin who never felt the urge to use the thing dangling between his legs for any other purpose than urination and, _holy fucking hell,_ how could he forget that they’re shooting porn in this place?!

Loki’s eyes fly open and he jerks into a sitting position, panting, the contours of the room and the facial expressions of the people standing in it suddenly, _finally_ , razor-sharp. The girl looks at him as if he lost his mind. “What the hell are you doing?”

“The question is: What the hell are _you_ doing?” Midnight snarls. “Get back down.”

“No,” Loki huffs, jumping off the bed as though the sheets suddenly caught fire.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” asks Nebula as she moves towards the door, crossing her arms in front of her chest.

“I …” His throat is too dry to speak.

“Why do you act like it’s some sort of punishment to be sucked off by such a pretty mouth?” Nebula continues.

Vomit sloshes up Loki’s throat. “Ew,” he spits before he can stop himself. “Who knows where she’s been with that mouth.”

“Fuck you,” the girl spits back with unparalleled eloquence.

“Just enjoy yourself, for fuck’s sake,” says Nebula. “And don’t be such a fucking pussy!”

Loki’s eyes dart across the dimly lit room, panic welling up inside of him.

“Get back onto the bed or the boss won’t be pleased,” Midnight snaps.

“I don’t care,” bristles Loki, his gaze lingering on the door, which is blocked by both Nebula and Gamora now, and it’s the truth because he’d choose a beating over, well, pretty much _everything_ else anytime, which is royally messed-up, of course, but he’s Loki and that’s just who he is. A hopeless whacko.

“You think you can make a run for it?” Gamora asks nastily, her words followed by a condescending chuckle.

He is under no illusion that he can but that doesn’t mean he won’t try. Loki throws himself against Gamora with all the physical strength he can muster, shoving her into Nebula, catching them by surprise for a second. As soon as he opens the door though, they jump at him from behind and pin him to the ground, his chest wounds splitting open again with a satisfying sting. “Thanos told us you’re a feisty little shit.”

 _Fuck_ , is all Loki can think.

“Alright, let’s cuff him. Change the narrative a bit,” Midnight decides.

“No,” Loki pleads in a shriek, his heart thundering in his chest, his veins rapidly filling with ice water as the panic threatens to drown him. “ _Please_.”

“Then. Get. Back. On. The. Bed.” Midnight is fuming now and short of beating them all up, which is physically impossible because he’s such a twig, there is nothing Loki can do. He swallowed that fucking pill, trapping himself in a daze and, by extension, in this shithole. It’s his own goddamn fault because he didn’t have it in him to live with his own sorry ass self without popping a fucking pill even though he knows exactly what this shit does to people. _You’re_ _just like your Mom_. _Disgusting piece of filth_. _You deserve nothing less than this_. _This is where you come from_.

Loki lies down, stretching out his legs.

 _Whore_.

“We use the first take,” Midnight decides. “It felt quite natural. You start again with moving down there, sweetie,” she continues, addressing the girl.

She complies and, as soon as she opens the zipper of his leather pants, Loki’s mind erupts into whiteness and he’s finally, finally, _oh thank God_ , back in the floaty space, enveloped by warmth, the sound of a steady heartbeat lulling him into oblivion.

* * *

A few miles from where his adopted son is being vulgarized for profit and the carnal desires of a local drug lord’s lackey, Odin is sitting on the balcony of his hotel room, taking a nip of his second scotch, his eyes roaming the LA skyline as if he could spot Loki from up here. Now that he is here, the endeavor seems rather ridiculous, pointless even, which, of course, he would have realized before leaving for McCarran airport if he’d just thought this through to the end. Or even the middle, for that matter.

It seemed logical earlier. Payphones are a relic of the past, after all, because it’s no longer profitable to keep them operational. Nowadays they can only be found where truly needed—in poorer, high-crime rate areas of town, around hospitals or airports, or in remote areas. Since the PI already narrowed down the neighborhood, it shouldn’t have been so hard to drive around and check out the streets. What proved to be harder than he expected was to spot a payphone from the road while driving because they turned out to be quite inconspicuous and inching forward at five miles per hour angered other drivers to no end. Eventually he’d taken to the motels and hotels in the area, showing his son’s photo around, asking the staff if anyone had seen Loki.

This provided him with nothing except for the occasional “Oh, isn’t that the missing Vegas boy?” or the more frequent “This is a cash-only dump, man, what do _you_ think?” in response and, while canvassing the latter variety of establishments, he had troubles imagining Loki lying down in such a filthy place. He was always neat and always cleaned up after himself even when he grew into a teenager; in contrast to Thor, who, much to their housekeeper’s dismay, used to leave the bathroom as if a hurricane had roared through it when he was in a hurry to get ready for school in the morning.

Odin sighs.

In many ways, Loki had been easier to raise than Thor. Loki never threw his homework halfway across the room in angry frustration because he wanted to play ball instead of solving fractions. He never sneaked out at night to party and got so drunk that he redecorated Odin’s boat with his vomit. He self-taught himself many things through reading, things you needed to spell out for Thor with endless patience when he was at that same age. Loki didn’t get into fights in school, didn’t defy his teachers. He can cook himself a meal, do his own laundry. Compared to Thor, he used to be a lot quieter overall on his good days, desperately trying to please.

Except, of course, when he was crying himself into a frenzy, throwing his tantrums and living through his night terrors, driving Odin and the rest of the family up the wall with his high-pitched screaming and constant demands for affection.

If Odin allows himself to think about it—which he does now that the scotch has loosened him up a little—he can, at least partly, understand the point Frigga was trying to make when she said that Loki lived through a traumatic experience as an infant. Being left alone in the cold with no caregiver to respond to his screaming and meet his emotional needs must have been awful, soul-crushing even and, yes, very much traumatic, which is why he gritted his teeth and let Loki sleep in their bed until he was almost five years old; even if that meant that he didn’t have Frigga to himself for a single night for about half a decade.

But that was then.

This is now and Loki is no longer a child. He’s a teenager who began pushing everyone away and then blamed them all for leaving. A teenager who left their home after hurting himself and stabbing his brother, still holding both Thor and Frigga emotionally hostage because, of course, they both blame themselves for what happened. _Hell_ , given half a chance, they’re probably going to blame _him_ too for what happened because he _dared to suggest_ admitting Loki to a mental hospital just after Hela left. Maybe it wasn’t the opportune moment to confront him with it but Odin is still convinced that it would have been necessary to protect Loki from himself and give him a chance to finally overcome this … this whatever festers inside his head that prevents him from developing into a functional human being.

But, no, Frigga and Thor are still under the delusion that they can save him, despite sixteen goddamn years of evidence that hugs and love cannot fix people proving them wrong.

He gulps down his scotch to quench his anger but it does very little.

If only they’d found Loki a competent therapist when he was little. If only Odin himself hadn’t scoffed at the very idea of therapy and realized that Loki would not just grow out of these issues when he got older.

 _If only_.

They might still be a family. Frigga would still be his wife. Thor wouldn’t be lying in the hospital. Loki wouldn’t be missing or—Odin swallows—dead.

He rises from his chair to get himself another drink.

* * *

Three-hundred miles eastwards, Thor is scouring the stretch of the Mojave Desert between the outskirts of Summerlin and Red Rock Canyon in his dreams, frantically searching for his little brother. He told the cops that he thinks Loki might have killed himself but that can’t be true. He’s out there, he must be! Because if he isn’t, Thor will never gaze into Loki’s clever, brilliant green eyes again, never see him smirk again or hear him use big words, smartassing about this or that only to annoy the heck out of Thor. He’ll never hug him again, never feel his sharp bones under his palms again, never feel him relax against his broad chest again because Loki feels protected by Thor’s strong arms. No, that can never be. _Never_.

Thor runs faster, shouting Loki’s name, lumps pumping violently. The desert looks the same everywhere, _of course it does_ , every fucking rock looks like the other and he can’t possibly hope to find … No, he will not give up. _Never_. And if Loki returns to him, he’ll never let him go again. He’ll hug him all day, every day, he’ll hug him forever, until even Nikias believes that he cares.

Thor runs until he finds a small cave opening into the rock, almost invisible at first but clearly visible as soon as you know it’s there.

Thanks to the logic native to dreams, Thor knows that Loki is inside and so he enters, his heart beating so fast that he is dizzy and nauseous. “Brother?” he whispers, his own voice sounding strange. Hoarse. Strangled even. “I’m here. Please, come home.”

No answer.

“Brother?”

Thor ventures further and further into the dark until he sees the body and then, suddenly, it is no longer dark at all. Slumped against the wall of rock, green eyes wide open, Loki sits, his expression frozen in pain and terror. He slashed his left wrist with the edges of a rock, one deep, horrifying gash revealing bone and sinew. He’s still clutching the rock in his right hand and there’s so much blood, _holy fuck_ , he’s sitting in a large fucking pool of blood that dyed his clothing crimson. And then there’s a message, written in blood, on the wall of the cave.

 _Forgive me_ , _brother_.

Three words, just three little words, but they knock him out cold.

Before he can reach Loki’s corpse, Thor snaps awake, dissolving into screams and gut-wrenching sobs that seem to attract half the hospital staff. They’re suddenly all over him, blue scrubs and urgent voices, _telling him to calm the fuck down_ , _fucking assholes_ , they don’t even know what they’re talking about, _for fuck’s sake_!

Somehow, fueled by his rage and grief, Thor finds enough strength inside of him to pull himself up and punch a nurse in the face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep, yep, Odin's opinion of Loki seems to vary from moment to moment (even if he's still mostly driven by Frigga's decision at the moment) and so does, as Akira pointed out, Loki's own self-preservation instincts. And, also yep, Thor's anger issues probably need to be dealt with sooner rather than later. He's in a pretty tough spot *coughs*


	14. The lost and the damned

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We learn that Thor's perception of Frigga being all kick-ass was a little skewed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's no graphic or explicit descriptions in this one. Just hints and good old whump. And an unexpected therapy session in a grocery store café.

If anyone had asked him prior to walking into the house close to two in the morning, Thanos would have probably insisted that he’s seen pretty much everything, given how long he’s been in business. It happens that people—addicts and minors mostly, which isn’t mutually exclusive by any means—lose their minds. It happens that they go crazy; drugged teenage girls can be particularly hysterical. It pretty much comes with the territory. But when he checks all the rooms just to be on the safe side that night, opening the door to one of the sound-proofed ones to assess its condition and spotting Loki, Thanos has to admit to himself that he never saw anything quite like _that_. The kid is sitting on the floor, back slumped against the wall, arms looped around his propped up knees, screaming his fucking head off, face scrunched up in a grimace of agony, lips quivering as he keeps crying, screaming, hugging himself, his whole body trembling. El told him that Loki sometimes loses his shit in the middle of the night but never before did he witness it himself; which is why he never truly believed her until this very moment. “What the …”

Thanos whirls around, stomping off to Room Three, in which, judged by the red light on the door, they were still filming when he walked into the house. Not anymore. He pushes the door open, striding into the room. “What the fuck?!”

A girl is sitting on the bed, wiping her mouth as she scrambles off a guy who’s not quite what Thanos had in mind when he gave Midnight instructions but still looks acceptable enough, and they’re both startling when he stomps inside, Loki’s screams still echoing through the house because he left the door ajar. “You two,” he booms, glaring at the kids, “wait outside!”

They glance at each other like frightened squirrels and then shoot out of the room like fireworks.

His girls stand there, defiant, cocky, _so fucking full of themselves_ , and his hand itches to smack them all across the face. “How on earth could you fuck this up, hm?” Thanos roars. “This was supposed to be a harmless thing!”

“I guess he wasn’t ready yet.” Midnight shrugs. “Which is why we had to get a replacement.”

“A replacement?” Thanos echoes, caught between seething hot anger and incredulousness as he tries to piece together what might have happened but, then again, he knows he shouldn’t be surprised. The problem with employing lackeys is that over sixty percent of them inevitably turn out to be blithering idiots. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“As soon as the girl touched Robin’s dick, the kid kinda freaked,” Midnight reports, seemingly dutifully. “We tried to get him back in line but then he just kinda zoned out and his cock stayed limp like cooked spaghetti and then he just …” She jerks her head in the direction of the noise.

“Started screaming his fucking ass off,” Gamora steps in, no less dutifully.

Thanos wants to smack them all. So much for not jumping the gun on the kid. _Fucking amateurs_. “That was not the fucking plan,” he hisses. “Why did you even—”

“But you said,” Nebula cuts in, defending herself, always defending herself, never owning up to fucking anything. _That useless little bitch_. _Needy ex-whore_ , _always trying to please_. If not for Gamora’s pleas to be patient with her, he’d kicked that piece of garbage to the curb long ago.

“I told you to show him around, for fuck’s sake,” Thanos barks, his fist crashing into her cheek. “Didn’t I?”

Nebula howls in pain. “But—”

“Did I tell you to use him for that scene? I don’t fucking think so!” Thanos roars. “I told you to show him how the business works, so that he can help you scout in the near future!”

“Come on, get over yourself,” says Midnight, always way too fucking confident. It’s his own fault. He let her get too cocky. “You can’t deny that you would’ve loved it if it had worked out.”

“The only problem is that it didn't,” Thanos spits and then punches her too, which he hasn’t done in a long, long time because she’s always been useful until today. “Now tell me, if you can’t even follow basic orders, what use are you three sorry bitches to me?”

Midnight gulps.

 _Damn those fucking wastrels_.

“It’s not gonna happen again,” says Gamora, trying to smooth things over. She’s by far his favorite. Well, usually. Tonight, not so much. “We wanted to surprise you.”

 _Incredible_. _Fucking incredible_.

“You did. And you’re all gonna regret it,” Thanos snarls at them. “You finish up here and pay the kids.”

He walks—strides—back into the other room and drops down to his knees. “Hey,” says he but when he touches the kid’s arm, Loki raises his voice a few more decibels, the wail coming out of his usually so perfectly thin but now vibrating and ugly snotty lips bordering on ear-splitting. He doesn’t even seem to realize who’s there. He’s all screaming sobs and hysteria, which is as annoying as it is discomforting, and that alone says an awful lot.

“Shshsh, I have something for you,” murmurs Thanos because he always has something with him to help the lost and the damned scoop up the pieces of their shattered existence from the proverbial bottom of the proverbial rock.

The kid won’t have it though, not without a fight. He tries to bite him when he comes too close with the special pill, Diazepam laced with traces of Vicodin, arms and legs flailing. After a few minutes, Thanos decides to crush the pill to inject it directly into the kid’s veins. It’s gonna be a lot faster, a lot less painless for him and everyone else in the vicinity. Not that the girls seemed to mind at all, _fucking_ _bitches_. _Useless street scum_.

“Gamora!” Thanos hollers. “A little help!”

She is there within five seconds, undeniably trying to be pleasant.

“Hold him,” he orders and she does exactly what he wants her to do because they’ve done this probably close to a million times. Gamora crouches down and grabs both of Loki’s hands, pinning them under her knees to keep him from squirming and writhing like a goddamn snake. Thanos smiles to himself as he removes the kid’s right boot and sock before he, _squelch_ , inserts the syringe into the skin between the kid’s second and third toe.

He squeaks, still struggling at first but, eventually, after a few more minutes of gasping and screaming and crying, he goes limp, eyelids finally fluttering shut. Thanos saved him from his meltdown and the kid will remember that. He’ll ask for more. They always do, this is just the beginning.

“Now, get out of my sight,” Thanos grunts and then he pulls Loki off the ground. Carries him to his car. Drives him home. Lowers him into bed. Tucks him in, even. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles, his hand lingering on the top of the kid’s head, twisting his shiny black hair. “That wasn’t the plan.”

He’s sorry alright because he’s pretty damn sure that sober El—if she pulls through detox, which he very much doubts at this point but miracles _do_ happen every two thousand years after all—wouldn’t hesitate to kill him if she found out about this. Despite the fact that she’s trying her best to hide it, probably from herself mostly, she doesn’t find the feisty little whirlwind even half as annoying as she claims. Not anymore. On the contrary, Thanos is pretty sure that she’d fight for him and if El fights, she fights dirty. He knows from firsthand-experience that she’s a force to be reckoned with when she puts her fucking mind to it.

* * *

Right now, though, Elena’s—Hela’s—mind is only focused on one thing: Trying not to puke. _Not again_. Detox is fucking ugly. It involves tears, sweating, cold flashes, vomit, a whole fucking lot of vomit actually, but also losing control of your entire body, shitting and peeing everywhere like a fucking toddler, leaving you dizzy, agitated and shivering like there’s no fucking tomorrow. Hela lived through all of this and more ever since she admitted herself the previous morning, which was twenty-four hours ago, maybe not even that, but it already feels like a whole ass lifetime filled with agony.

If she had to guess, she’d say she was already dead and suffering in hell because how the fuck could hell possibly be worse than this?

She can’t stop shaking. She’s thrown up so many times that she can’t draw a breath without coughing because her throat is sorer than her pussy ever was, even after the worst of the worst nights out in the alphabets. If she drifts off into sleep for as much as a minute, she’s immediately jolted awake again because the tremors won’t stop rocking through her body. She can’t even drink any water by herself because her hands are shaking so badly that she’s dependent on a fucking staff member to help her out. And even if they do help her out, chances are, her stomach will reject it. She can’t even think of food. She’s screaming all the time, bawling maybe, because everything fucking hurts.

The doctors are constantly in and out of her room.

She’s relatively sure she isn’t gonna make it. Doesn’t deserve to make it. The deepest point is there, right under her, she’s floating in the muddy waters right above it, and if she throws up one more time, she’s gonna drown and if she does, she won’t ever see the light of day again.

In one of her more whatever-passes-for-lucid-in-her-fucked-up-state moments, they told Hela that they’ll have to do a full detox, which includes all the painkillers she’s been inhaling for the past year. Past years, as in plural, if she’s being totally honest, which she usually isn’t. They also told her that, with the combination of drugs she had inside her system upon admission—benzodiazepines, cocaine, alcohol, prescription opiates, _blah_ , _blah_ , _blah_ —she’s at the highest risk for severe withdrawal and withdrawal complications.

 _No fucking kidding_.

The methadone they’re giving her might as well be a sugar cube dissolved in water and she’s actually pretty sure it is because it _doesn’t do a fucking thing_.

“It’s quite natural you feel that way,” said the doctor, who she totally would’ve punched straight into his far-too pleasant face a week ago when was still able to haul her drugged, sorry ass out of bed. “But in order to determine the effects of the cancer on your body, we need to get all the poison flushed out ASAP to see how it’d develop without the drugs.”

Maybe it’s bullshit, maybe it’s not. Who is she to tell? Maybe that’s not even exactly— _remotely_ —what he said because she’s still having a pretty damn hard time to focus on words.

When she asked one of the doctors how long this nightmare would take, he told her that it might take a few weeks to “reach complete resolution of all withdrawal symptoms in a case as severe as yours.”

 _Holy fucking crap_.

“Do I have to stay here this long?” she asked, well sputtered-slurred, dreading his answer.

“Well, where else would you go?” he asked back, the question followed by a sad, pseudo-empathetic chuckle.

 _To save my kid_ , Hela thought but didn’t say because if she wants to go up against Thanos, she’ll need to be able to stand upright after all. She’ll need to be able to hold a fucking gun and pull the fucking trigger.

* * *

“Mrs. Fjörgyndottir?”

Frigga has been staring at the anger management and stress relieving toys she has never before seen marketed at the local store for longer than she cares to admit when she hears the voice. She turns around, empty grocery basket in hand, her eyes meeting those of Dr. Janet van Dyne.

“Hello,” she brings herself to say because the pleasant smile on the other woman’s face is enough to unravel the threads of her existence that are still loosely woven together. In fact, it makes her want to crumble right then and there, to unload everything that happened with Thor onto her to see what she has to say about her son’s outbursts and everything else. She’s been doing reasonably well—at least, in her own mind—before that conversation with Coulson and the CPS investigator but now, she’s gone back to being an anxious mess. It’s scary and she could use some perspective but, then again, she’s an adult who’s grocery shopping and who just met another adult doing the very same thing. This isn’t a therapist’s office and Frigga isn’t her patient.

She clears her throat. “I never got around to thanking you for calling LVMPD. I think you really made a difference.” Of course she did. If Dr. van Dyne hadn’t convinced Coulson in the crucial stage of the investigation that Loki wasn’t to blame for his outburst, they’d be treating him a lot differently once they find him. Not that Coulson is a bad person or a bad cop. He’s one of the few good ones out there, Frigga is sure of that, and knowing he is taking into account what Thor did to Loki previously and what Loki went through before he lashed out is reassuring. Yet, if the doctor hadn’t called him, he still would have charged _Loki_ even though it wasn’t Loki who drove the shard into his brother’s side and, _dammit_ , this is still hard to come to terms with. Which is why she’s aching to talk to the other woman even if she already owes her a few favors.

“Do you, uh, maybe want to get some coffee?” asks Dr. van Dyne, her head jerking in the general direction of the Starbucks located in the entrance area of the store.

“I guess I could do with a break, yes,” Frigga says, which is ridiculous, of course, because it’s not even noon and she hasn’t done anything so far today except trying to ignore the fact that Odin left without as much as a word or a text the previous day—which shouldn’t bother her as much as it does, all things considered—and softly trying to talk Thor out of another blowup of rage when she came to see him in the morning. Which bothers her _a lot_ and is a far more acceptable reason to be upset than obsessing over the fact that the husband she herself _divorced_ wordlessly left the home they still share for practical reasons, considering that her son broke the nose of a twenty-two-year-old nurse who was just trying to calm him down.

“So, how are you holding up?” Dr. van Dyne asks as soon as they’ve taken a seat at a table in the back with their respective orders after they both left their empty grocery baskets at the checkout and headed for the Starbucks.

“I don’t know,” says Frigga and it’s the truth. She really has no idea how she’s getting up in the morning anymore. “I’m … overwhelmed, I guess. I’m trying to just … go on and function. For the sake of my boys.”

The therapist nods.

“I hope you don’t find this question offensive,” Frigga says then because she suddenly feels like she is leeching even though the other woman took the words right out of her mouth when she made the offer, “but why do you have such an interest in helping my family?”

“Well, I consider this my job,” Dr. van Dyne offers.

“But, still, you only met Loki once,” Frigga exclaims before she remembers the cultural directive not to look a gift horse in the mouth. “I’m sorry. It’s just … Loki, uh, he doesn’t have this effect on many people, I’m afraid. Usually, people just … They find him … He doesn’t really fit in anywhere, usually,” she ultimately settles on saying.

“He’s intelligent and far ahead of his age in this respect,” says Dr. van Dyne. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if his peers didn’t quite know how to handle it.”

“Oh, they handled it in their own way, didn’t they?” Frigga snaps, wondering how the hell she just managed to make it sound as if what happened to Loki at Infinity High was somehow the doctor’s fault. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“I know I only met him once,” Dr. van Dyne cuts her off, replying to her initial question, rescuing her. “But I can’t stop thinking about him. You know, sometimes you meet a patient and you’re just intrigued by them. Just as people you meet in other social contexts might intrigue you. There was something about your son that really made me want to learn more about him.”

Tears spring to Frigga’s eyes. “Thank you. That means a lot to me.”

“How is Thor doing?” the doctor asks then. “Is he recovering from his injuries?”

“He is,” Frigga replies, which fills her with gladness but, on top of that, in the face of recent events, no small amount of dread either.

Dr. van Dyne smiles at her. “I am glad.”

“Though he said,” Frigga begins, a sob cutting her voice off because she still hasn’t processed the full meaning of the words her son uttered during the interrogation the previous day. “He said that Loki tried to kill himself before. He … never even told me. Before, I mean. He told me yesterday, after the cops left, and I probed him. He told me that Loki tried to …” Her voice trails off as she looks at her own wrist, her fingers tracing the blue artery pulsating under her skin. “He saw how Loki tried to claw … He ripped his skin open with his own nails so deeply he needed stitches. He said he didn’t want to live like this anymore.”

The therapist nods.

“He also said that he thinks Loki might have committed suicide but …” Frigga’s words trail off once more. “Do you have children?”

“I’m afraid not,” Dr. van Dyne says.

“Well, it’s … you have a connection with them, you know. I know that Loki isn’t dead. I know in my heart that he’s out there, alive. Which is what keeps me going, even if I am worried. I am worried about Thor too because …”

She thinks of what happened yesterday morning when he lost it.

“Because?”

“He has a temper and, uh, I always thought, well, I always thought it wasn’t something to truly worry about.” Frigga chuckles grimly. “He was always a force of nature, even as a child. He got into fights in school and, well, he’s been playing football since grade school. I always knew he was going to take after his father, too, but I never thought it was alarming. Not like Odin’s temper alarmed me. After all, Thor’s temper always seemed …” She can’t think of a proper description because both _harmless_ and _innocent_ do not seem awfully fitting when talking about outbursts of anger and decides to let it go. “Until I realized it wasn’t. Before things escalated, he told me that violence was just how teenagers communicated with each other. He bragged about physically harming younger students. He … assaulted Loki.”

“Detective Coulson told me about that,” Dr. van Dyne rescues her before she has to tell the story again. “Was that a one-time thing?”

“As far as I know, it was,” Frigga admits. “But I’m no longer under the illusion that I know everything that’s been going on in my house.”

“You know,” says the therapist, clearing her throat for good measure, “if they find Loki, they’ll try to determine appropriate custody for him. And with both your husband and your other son—”

“Ex-husband,” Frigga provides. “I, uh, filed for divorce. It’s over. I won’t let him breathe near Loki anymore if that’s what the court wants me to do.”

She smiles, faintly. “Good for you. But it’s still, uh, it’s a lot you have going on right now.”

“Some people thrive on stress,” Frigga tries to joke because it’s what Loki would do.

Dr. van Dyne’s smile turns a little more sincere. “From what you’ve told me, Thor doesn’t live with you anymore but, still, he temporarily moved back in and from all I’ve seen and heard, they are pretty close, so if he is to—”

“I know,” Frigga interrupts because she is nowhere near emotionally ready for this lecture. And still … “This is what I’m, well, anxious about, I guess you could say. The police interviewed him yesterday—Thor, I mean—and a CPS investigator was present. Detective Coulson told me from the beginning they’d have to determine appropriate custody but I never met a child services investigator until then. Thor was, he wasn’t at his best. He’s severely stressed with everything that happened, and he lost it. He got really, really angry. He wiped his breakfast off the table. He tried to start an argument with the police, even told them to fuck themselves, barely able to hold his temper in check. And last night, he punched a nurse, breaking her nose.”

Dr. van Dyne raises her eyebrows.

“I know what you’re going to say,” Frigga sighs.

“Oh really?” A soft chuckle slips past her lip. “Enlighten me, please.”

“How could I not see this sooner?” Frigga offers. “Well, I was blind to it. I never thought he’d go as far as hurting his brother or even … strangers. I never—”

“Mrs. Fjörgyndottir—”

“Please,” she says on a sudden impulse, “call me Frigga.”

“Frigga,” says Dr. van Dyne and it seems like she’s just this side of suppressing a deep sigh. “You surely do have a bad habit of blaming yourself for everything, don’t you?”

Frigga’s mouth opens but then it closes again because there’s nothing she could really say to that.

“Have you ever asked yourself why your son gets so angry sometimes?”

“I think I know why,” Frigga sighs. “Thor likes to be in charge. He likes to fix things He relishes it when people rely on him and depend on him. He’s team captain of his football team after all, has been for years, in every team he played over the years. He loves it when people count on him to save the day. It gives him a sense of purpose. But with Loki, he couldn’t do that anymore, not recently. He couldn’t make things better anymore and now he’s doubly helpless.” She thinks of Thor, metaphorically chained to his hospital bed. “And he’s not taking it very well.”

“Considering what I have gathered of your family dynamics so far—which is by no means enough—I’d guess that there are underlying issues Thor needs to resolve with therapy of his own,” Dr. van Dyne suggests. “At the very least, I’d assume he’ll need to agree to an anger management course if he wants to stay with you once Loki is found.”

Frigga nods because, the heavens know, it wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world. It’s what kept her transfixed in front of those anger management toys in the first place.

“Because, if that’s his problem, he’ll need to understand that there is no way to ‘fix’ Loki,” Dr. van Dyne goes on. “If he truly suffers from a dissociative disorder, which, at this point I am nearly convinced that he does, he cannot be ‘healed’. This won’t ever go away. There is no medication to heal anyone suffering from them.”

Frigga’s heart gives a lurch. “You mean … What? He’ll stay like this? Forever?”

“Yes,” says Dr. van Dyne. “That doesn’t mean he’ll have to stay miserable forever, of course, which is what therapy will be for, but those Voices, as Loki named them? They won’t ever go away. They are a part of him and they’ll stay a part of him for as long as he lives.”

“Thor, uh, he called them multiple personalities,” Frigga begins, hesitantly, thinking back to how first Tony and then her son dropped the term as if it was nothing. “I engaged in a bit of research via google, which I know, is not always reliable, but is that what this is? Is Loki, I mean, are those voices … Does he have multiple personalities?”


	15. A very physical person

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Frigga learns more about Loki's condition as Thor's doctor puts a damper on his already foul mood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot of talking and a lot of psychology, sorry about that.

It is not really a question, not anymore. Sitting by Thor’s bed hospital for almost a month, anxiously awaiting news from Coulson, Frigga had a lot of time to think ever since Tony Stark so nonchalantly assured her that she had every right to be mess.

“Multiple personality disorder is an outdated term,” says Dr. van Dyne. “We now refer to what used to be called personalities as alternate states of consciousness or alternate states of identity, in short alters. Or dissociated parts, if you wish.”

“Alternate states of consciousness,” Frigga echoes because it sounds astonishingly accurate to her ears, much more accurate—and much less stigmatizing—than thinking of Loki as having different personalities, which is probably why experts renamed the condition somewhere along the way. “I always thought those states were mood swings, you know,” Frigga continues when the other woman remains silent. “It always felt like, well these past months, Loki switched attitudes or emotions or whatever you want to call it so fast that it became hard to tell which ‘version’ so to speak of Loki you were talking to. One minute, he was composed, almost detached, and said things like, ‘Your opinion of me is rather partisan, don’t you think?’ that make him sound like a thirty-year-old PhD student but then”—she snaps her fingers for emphasis—“you blinked once and he was like ‘fuck this shit’ before his emotions overwhelmed him.” She feels her face heat up with the chastised schoolgirl type of embarrassment. “Excuse my French.”

The doctor smiles and that smile unleashes something in Frigga. “Yet, when he was in that state of regression the weekend before the, uh, stabbing, he mentioned Loki as if he was different person,” she continues and it does feel good to speak to a professional about it. “He also mentioned someone named Nikias and I had no idea who that is, at first, because I never heard the name before but, apparently, he was the one who pushed his brother away. Thor addressed him as Nikias too, shortly before Loki, well, Nikias stabbed him and … It’s really confusing.”

Dr. van Dyne smiles. “It always is.”

“So you think it’s true?” asks Frigga, the few sips of coffee she managed to sip gnawing at the walls of her stomach. _It’s not the end of the world_ , she tells herself. _He suffered trauma and his brain tried to cope with it_. _There’s nothing inherently bad or shameful about that_.

“I think it’s likely,” says the doctor. “But bear in mind that this is just my opinion from what you told me and what I witnessed earlier, not a confirmed diagnosis. While he’s showing some symptoms of dissociative identity disorder, DID for short, others are absent and it’s still too early to tell. I only spoke with him once.”

“How could I not realize this?” Frigga blurts out. “He’s my son. He’s been living in my home—”

“DID is a coping mechanism that develops to protect a child. Usually, people do not become aware that they have it until later on in their life because children who have DID are not supposed to know that they have DID. You see,” she adds when she sees Frigga’s puzzled expression, “this disorder exists for the sole reason of keeping those affected emotionally safe from having to process trauma.”

“But how does that happen? That someone develops different personalities that, uh, take the trauma away?”

“They’re not different personalities per se,” the doctor explains with a patience that Frigga can’t help but admire. “It’s rather different than from how it is portrayed in the media. People with DID do not _have_ different personalities, as in one core personality that split or fragmented into different parts. Rather, there is Loki and then there are other people with their own personalities who are not Loki coexisting inside a system. Loki is his own individual person and Nikias is his own individual person and the child might be too and there might be others.”

“How many are there? Usually, I mean.”

“That’s hard to say because it’s different for each individual. Could be five, could be ten, could be twenty-five.”

“Twenty-five?” Frigga echoes, the implications slamming into her with full force. Despite her best intentions, she suddenly feels ill. Very ill. Not because this sounds horrible but because, well, it _does sound_ horrible but only in the sense that she wishes that Loki wouldn’t have to deal with this for the rest of his life. “But how does one manage that? If there’s no medication?”

“Therapy. There is a residential treatment facility for trauma patients on the outskirts of Phoenix that you should consider,” Dr. van Dyne tells her and Frigga tries to ignore the fact that this would put Loki three-hundred miles away and into another time zone once she gets him back. “A good friend of mine works there and they’re up to date on the latest trauma and dissociation research, which isn’t always guaranteed, and also employ former patients as coaches who teach those newly diagnosed how to deal with flashbacks or how to communicate within a system. It’s pricey but it provides excellent care. One of the best in the country.”

“Pricey isn’t a problem,” Frigga says because they both know that this is true. She paid that woman one-hundred-eighty dollars for an hour after all. Quality comes at a price and if there’s a slight chance that Loki’s mental health will benefit from it, she’ll sell everything that will end up on her bank account when Odin’s divorce lawyer is done to make it work. No, pricey isn’t the problem. “But he wouldn’t be seeing you then.”

“He might,” Dr. van Dyne says. “I was offered the position of chief psychiatrist there and I’m inclined to take it. It’s a great place. I think it might be good for him.”

 _Ah_.

“I see,” says Frigga. “If you aren’t in a rush to get anywhere,” she manages, as politely as she’s able to, “can you tell me where those alters come from? How they, uh, form?”

“DID develops when there’s repeated childhood trauma, such as violence, neglect, abandonment or abuse.”

“Apparently, Loki, or his child alter, told Thor that he was abused when he was a child but I …” Frigga murmurs, getting lost in her thoughts because _that_ is the one thing she won’t ever be able to forgive herself. _Not ever. Not for as long as she lives._ “I never knew. I wouldn’t have gone back to work if I had known. I left him … I mean, he was screaming every time I left for work and Thor thinks that this should’ve been my cue that something was wrong. I mean, I did think that something was wrong, which is why we took him to a therapist when he was four. He suddenly had a lot of problems after growing into a perfectly healthy, clever toddler. I sent him to a preschool for gifted children shortly before his third birthday because he was so intelligent and ahead of his age. He started speaking under a year and knew shapes and colors very early on, then the alphabet at under two, reading his first words when he was only two-and-a-half and I figured it only made sense to give him a proper education. He hated it. He acted like a baby again and just cried a lot and, I guess you could say, he tried to dumb himself down. He hated his nanny too and I … Gosh, I just thought he hated being away from me, you know.”

Now that she started, there’s no holding back the words. “That it wasn’t the circumstances themselves he hated. He couldn’t stand to be separated from me. He cried every time when I put him down when he was a baby. I ended up buying one of those baby carrier slings, carrying him around twenty-four-seven. He slept in our bed until he was five, until my husband couldn’t take it anymore, and after that, he went to sleep in Thor’s bed.”

“So, they _were_ really close?”

“They still are, I think.” Frigga draws a sharp breath and exhales, in on five, out on ten. “If you take Nikias out of the equation. Anyways, when Loki was four, we told the therapist that Loki was adopted but he told us it was just separation anxiety and that it would pass. I guess, he was sidetracked by Loki’s intelligence. We trusted the therapist and hoped he’d adjust. When he was at home, he seemed fine but every morning was a nightmare. Eventually, I did take him out of preschool again after a few months, much to my husband’s dismay because he was reluctant to ‘throw money out of the window’”—she makes air quotes, just in case—“for a private tutor. He said I was pampering Loki, showering him with too much attention. That he’d need to learn to function in school as every other child at some point but we didn’t send him back until he was six. And then he was immediately transferred to third grade because he was way ahead of his classmates.”

“Your husband actually said that you were showing him _too much attention_?” The doctor looks disgusted when Frigga gives a confirming nod. “Children need attention, some more than others. It’s curious that the English language found a way to make a genuinely human need sound awful, isn’t it? No, what’s truly awful is not giving a child the attention it needs.”

Frigga casts her eyes downwards, glancing at her hands, her ears growing hot with embarrassment.

“I wasn’t directing that at you specifically,” Dr. van Dyne clarifies.

“I know but I … I blame myself anyway. Well, Thor blames me too. He thinks I am bad mother because I didn’t realize what was going on and—”

“Look, you took him to a therapist and that man didn’t tell you what was going on. You couldn’t have known. You’re not a specialist.”

“But—”

“Listen, you blaming yourself won’t help your son, okay?” Dr. van Dyne urges her even though she knows it, deep down she does, which, of course, doesn’t mean that she is always capable of acting upon it. Especially not _now_. “This is an attitude you need to work on if you ever want Loki to get better. He is adopted. Chances were high that he’d develop an attachment disorder, separation anxiety and a fear of abandonment. That’s what you thought he was going through and that’s what you took him to therapy for. There’s no way you could have arrived at the conclusion that he was being abused on top of that, okay? No one can blame you for not suspecting abuse in that situation. Our brains are built to protect us, Frigga. Abuse within your own home? That’s nothing a brain would ever come up with unless the signs are very, very obvious, and sometimes not even then, because it poses too much of a threat to your view of the world.” She squeezes her arm again. “You did nothing wrong and if you can’t stop thinking you did, I’d suggest you start considering therapy for yourself. Because if you continue to carry this burden of guilt around with you, you might be impeding Loki’s recovery.”

Deep inside her heart, Frigga knows this. She blows out a breath. “He doesn’t deserve to deal with my stress on top of his.”

“He doesn’t,” agrees Dr. van Dyne.

“So, about these alters,” Frigga begins when she finds the strength to speak again.

“You know what PTSD is, right?”

Frigga nods.

“PTSD can develop after a single traumatic event that threatens an individual’s sense of self. If there’s repeated trauma, individuals might develop C-PTSD, complex post-traumatic stress disorder, which is to say that there are several traumatic experiences that are sometimes connected to one another. You can think of DID as a coping mechanism for complex, repeated, intertwined traumatic experiences in early childhood. You see, our personalities don’t fully form until we’re about seven to nine years old. That’s when our scattered states of consciousness integrate into a coherent whole. Babies only exist in very basic states. Hungry, cold, needing love, needing warmth, needing to urinate. As we grow older, these states evolve, adding more emotions or states to the mix, if you will, things like anger, curiosity, resentment, love, passion, but these states are still scattered in a way and don’t fully integrate into a whole until a specific age.”

Frigga nods again.

“But if there’s trauma, the state that is traumatized may be sealed away by the child because the child is too overwhelmed and they will shut this state out in a way. They will build amnesic walls around the traumatic event, so that they won’t remember it later. And the more frequently it happens, the more sealed-away parts there are going to be. And, when the age comes where the whole personality integrates, the parts don’t make it into the whole because they’ll remain safely tucked away behind the trauma walls. They stay there, and they develop their own identity. Not all of them. Some remain very basic and indistinct and shadowy, but some of those alternate states of consciousness will remain very active and they’ll develop independently of the what was once thought of the ‘core personality’.”

“So, everybody who was abused multiple times as a child actually develops this, uh, condition?” asks Frigga.

“No, because every child’s brain is different and not every child has the ability to dissociate themselves to such an extent that they reach an alternate state of consciousness,” Dr. van Dyne says but then stops. Frigga takes a sip of coffee, which will probably upset her stomach even more and which has gone cold in the meantime, burning down her throat like gasoline. “I’m really curious what happened with his birthmother but you never got around to sending me that email.”

“Which email?” Frigga asks before she remembers that she was to tell the therapist everything about the ‘adoption’ before Loki was scheduled to start therapy with her. Which seems like a lifetime ago now, with everything that happened after their first session. “Of course,” she corrects herself. “I’m sorry. It’s just … life got busy?”

It’s another thing Loki would have said and the therapist rewards her with a smile. “You are alike, you know.”

Frigga fights a ridiculously foolish smile that is stealing onto her lips in response to someone acknowledging the bond between them after weeks of being told that Loki might have chosen Hela over her. “Except that this isn’t possible, is it?”

“Of course it is,” objects the therapist. “You’re both very smart and very perceptive to the point of overthinking and overanalyzing every situation. And you have the same habit of fidgeting with your hands when you’re nervous.” She casts her eyes down to Frigga’s lap for emphasis. “Why don’t you tell me now?” she asks after a pause.

“I, uh, don’t want to keep you from anything,” Frigga says when she realizes how late it’s become.

“You’re not,” says the other woman, leaving Frigga wondering what her motivation is. “Please, just go ahead.”

Frigga has to clear her throat again, three times actually, before she finds it in her to tell the therapist about how she found Loki all those years ago and about what Hela told her a few weeks ago and about their first encounter leading to the incident with the glass shard. She leaves nothing out and when she finishes her tale, she feels drained, like a deflated bouncer castle.

“And you’re still blaming yourself,” says Dr. van Dyne.

“I’m trying not to,” Frigga admits, “but Odin … ‘Mark my words,’ he said to me when I suggested we tell him Loki was adopted, ‘learning the truth will destroy him.’ He was right. And then, when we visited Thor in the hospital, he told me that Thor was lying there because of me. ‘No matter what you’re trying to tell yourself, this is _your_ fault,’ he said. ‘Y _ours_ alone and you’ll have to live with it for the rest of your life’. I know he said it to pay me back for divorcing him but I can’t unhear it. It’s playing in my head, over and over again, whenever I rest too long to get lost in thought.”

Dr. van Dyne pushes her own cup of coffee far out of reach. “First of all, I’m glad you’ve emancipated yourself from a man like this. Second, life is not about being right, is it? It seems to be, a lot of times, but it’s really not. We’re all just human. We face a lot in daily life and we’re just trying to get by, right? We make mistakes. All of us do. You were pushed into a situation and you tried to handle it, without knowing all the facts. Without knowing that Loki has DID. Without knowing that it wasn’t really Loki who fell out with Thor. Without knowing that Loki was left in the cold _for hours_ as an infant.”

“Which traumatized him, very early on,” Frigga summarizes, her mind going back to that fateful night, to her recurring nightmare in which Loki died every time, her stomach suddenly all knots.

Dr. van Dyne nods. “If a baby cries and there is no response, said baby is left in a state of fragmentation, the need for comfort, warmth, maybe hunger, and a baby can’t manage these feelings. A baby is utterly dependent on their caregiver and if the caregiver disappears—” She interrupts herself to hand Frigga a napkin from the table. “They cannot deal with it. They … It poses a threat to their very existence.”

Frigga blows her nose with the offered napkin, trying to compose herself. “So, what you’re saying is that Loki experienced this trauma when he was just a baby and sealed it away.” Dr. van Dyne encourages her with a nod. “And then what … Please don’t tell me he was reliving that trauma every time I wasn’t there to comfort him or …” Everything inside her dies. The dam breaks. The thin wires that held her existence together for the last month snap, all of them at once.

“We don’t know that yet,” Dr. van Dyne says, squeezing her arm once more as she breaks out sobbing in public like a toddler.

It does nothing to comfort her.

* * *

Dr. Laghari doesn’t look overly pleased when he walks into the room and Thor can hardly blame the guy. He isn’t overly pleased with himself either because he fucking swore to whatever power dwells out there that he’d never get the Interstate-Fifteen-kind-of-angry ever again and still he let his rage suck him in again in as if it were quicksand. _Twice_. He lost his shit in front of the fucking CPS investigator who was there for the sole purpose of assessing how well he can keep his temper in check after his Mom apparently told them about what he did to Loki—after a lifetime of lying, she’s suddenly all about honesty, _fancy that_ —and he blew it. Royally. He told law enforcement to go fuck themselves, which, and he knew that even before he dutifully trudged off to law school to fulfill what he thought of as his Dad’s dream at the time, can only reflect badly upon him. And then he fucking punched a nurse in the face, breaking her goddamn nose. Agreed, he was still half-asleep when that happened and the staff that swarmed into the room after he lost it tried to make excuses for him, saying that he was “understandably flustered” and “a little disoriented”, but the guards who pinned him down so he could be sedated didn’t share their sympathy in the slightest. They looked at him as if he was fucking scum and maybe they were right to think so. He isn’t one jot better than his Dad. He’s a fucking brute. A bully, a rowdy, a fucking beater. _Can’t you blow off enough of your steam on the football field_ , _son_? Apparently not. There’s too much steam, too much anger, too much fucking rage, too much wrath, even now. His body is brimful with it. It’s a miracle they didn’t chain him up. It’s a miracle the nurse said she wasn’t going to report it or press charges. It’s an even greater miracle that she smiled at him after the guards maneuvered him back into a horizontal position, which was more than a little weird and not only because of all the blood gushing out of her nose.

Frigga looked at him with an inconsolable expression stamped across her features when she came in earlier this morning and Thor could tell that she was sorely disappointed. And who wouldn’t be, for fuck’s fucking sake? He’s supposed to keep it together and be strong for her after all and what did he do? Beat up a nurse because he had a bad dream?

 _Boo-fucking-hoo_. _Grow the fuck up_ , _son_ , he can almost hear his asshole of a Dad say. Who, by the way, didn’t even visit him once since he woke from a motherfucking coma, which still bugs the shit out of him because Frigga told him that Odin just left the house the previous day, taking off to who-knows-where, without even telling Thor that he was glad he fucking survived being stabbed.

 _Bastard_.

It’s a fucking shit show, no matter how you look at it. And no matter from what angle Thor looks at it, it doesn’t help with the anger. Nope, it makes the anger so, so much worse. Knowing Loki is out there, either dead or alone, knowing he lost a lot of that extra muscle he built over summer, knowing that he disappointed Frigga and Odin, too, apparently, even if Odin is an abusive, judgmental asshole—

“How are you feeling?” Dr. Laghari asks, his face a grimace.

“Better,” Thor squeezes out, which is an out-right lie, of course, because he feels like _absolute shit_ but, at least, he can slowly move his left arm now without a hot, white flash of pain blinding him on the spot. Which is probably what the doctor has been asking about because, _duh_ , he’s in a hospital after all, not some fucking psych ward. “My side, it’s starting to hurt less and less.”

“If you don’t keep engaging in any more rapid movements,” says the doctor, his gaze glued to Thor’s medical chart, “I’m sure you’ll be back on your feet in no time.”

 _Point taken_ , _thank you very much_ , _asshole_. He doesn’t say that out loud of course. It wouldn’t look particularly good on his resume if he did. “Does that mean that I can go home?” Thor asks instead.

Dr. Laghari nods. “I’m confident that we can discharge you soon. But”— _there’s always a but_ , _isn’t there_ —“that doesn’t mean you can go back to how things were. Not immediately, that is.”

“What are you saying, exactly?” Thor asks, trying to sound as pleasant and civilized as he can after turning into a fucking animal right under this guy’s nose less than twelve hours ago.

“No sports, no exercise,” the doctor tells him bluntly. “For at least a month.”

No running, no swimming, no boxing, no weightlifting, _no fucking nothing_ , Thor silently translates in his mind and his throat dries up at the very idea of just sitting around, being forced to do fucking nothing. At the idea of not going back to playing football any time soon, which is arguably the worst because it means that the season is fucking over for him and Bolten will recruit someone else to play for the 49ers and he’s gonna have to start all over again next summer. _Fuck everything_. _Fuck you_ , _Nikias_ , _I_ _fucking hate you_. “Are you serious?” Thor asks in a bleak voice.

“Look, I know you’re a very _physical_ person,” Dr. Laghari asserts and Thor’s fist itches to polish his face, “but you’ve been severely injured and you’ll need to give your body time to heal completely before you throw yourself back into exercising. Our physiotherapist will meet you tomorrow morning to discuss future steps with you.”

 _Holy freaking fuck_.

 _Just fucking shoot me_ , _please_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's all pray for this family's sanity, please.


	16. Just hang in there

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki tries to deal with ... all sorts of things in typical Loki fashion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Which is to say that the usual trigger warnings for Loki's POV continue to apply: depiction of self-harm, suicidal thoughts, substance abuse and, well, Thanos's business. If you want to avoid that kind of thing, please skip the last paragraph.
> 
> On the bright side, we also see that Loki is still smart and resourceful and a manipulative little shit when he wants to be.

When Loki’s eyelids flutter open around noon, he is, for a few seconds, sorely disappointed that he had to leave the floaty space again but, then again, at the very least, he’s back in his bed. Small comfort is better than no comfort after all, right? Well, technically, it’s not _his_ bed but the bed in Thanos’s apartment, the one with the soft, incredibly heavy sheets he never wants to leave again but has to, anyway, _has to right now_ , because his bladder is dangerously full. He peels himself out of the covers and heads for the bathroom, running almost. He’s still wearing the same clothes he put on the previous night—which makes him confident that he’s only missing a few hours tops—and that calms his nerves, which, true to form, start itching and crawling and tingling again as soon as he’s fully conscious.

Other than the sensation of his brain rapidly disintegrating, Loki can feel the conscience of Leah still hovering somewhere nearby and he panics at the mere thought of her sharing this … this ...

 _This was supposed to be your lesson and you just fucked off!_ _You’re fucking weak!_ _You were supposed to be here, not Leah! She had to experience … You fucking coward!_

Before Loki gets around to relieving his bladder, he starts to retch, coughing up some stomach acid into the sink.

 _Yuck_.

This isn’t right. None of this is right. None of it fair. Tears spring to his eyes and he balls his fists, pressing them into his eye sockets until he sees stars, his chest torn apart by heavy breaths. Why didn’t Hela just have a goddamn abortion? Why did she have to bring him into this world? Why did she have to do this to him? She should’ve known better. She should’ve known that this was no place for a baby or a kid or a teenager. Hell, she was a teenager herself.

 _Get it together_ , _you hopeless deadbeat_.

 _Deep breaths_ , _deep breaths_. _Yes_ , _that’s fine_.

When Loki can be relatively sure he won’t fall apart right where he stands in front of the toilet, he opens his zipper, for a moment inexplicably afraid that something might have happened to his penis but it looks fine and it doesn’t hurt when he pees. Is a cock supposed to hurt after getting a blowjob? Loki has no idea because … Well, he never thought about it. He never … The bullies in school used to call him a faggot but he never questioned their judgment far beyond how his fellow students remained blissfully oblivious to the fact that traditional ideas of what constitutes typically male and typically female behaviors or clothing were being fed to them through the media with its countless, insultingly stereotypical pop-cultural representations. He never once stopped to think if he actually liked boys or girls because he was oh so very busy despising the simplemindedness of his boringly superficial schoolmates.

Yet, after last night, which he still very much hopes was last night because he’s fucking done with blackouts, Loki ends up wondering why he was so scared of the idea of anyone touching him down there after all.

 _What the hell is wrong with you_? _Why do you act like it’s some sort of punishment to be sucked off by such a pretty mouth_?

Nebula made it sound as if, well, receiving this kind of ‘treatment’ was something he should, by all means, enjoy. And, surely enough, some guys in his school might have. They are horny all the time, distracted by short skirts and close-cropped tops, completely blinded by their sex drive, hardly able to focus on anything else sometimes. Loki has always scoffed at them for being so primitive but what if their behavior is just normal male teenage behavior? What if he’s the weird one— _yeah_ , _really_?!—because he never touched himself or never thought about having sex before walking into that house? What if this is yet _another_ thing that’s abnormal on top of, well, everything else that is wired wrongly in his pathetic, crazy ass brain?

It’s a depressing thought.

Heart almost pounding straight out of his chest and head throbbing with a dull pain that’s way worse than a normal hangover— _because_ _you swallowed a fucking pill_ , _you goddamn idiot_ , _you’re just as pathetic as your Mom_ —Loki’s fingers hesitantly travel to his crotch to touch his dick when his bladder is finally empty. He does touch himself eventually, but only very hesitantly, first cupping, then squeezing, then gently rubbing his penis. It feels … Well, it’s certainly not his favorite body part, that’s for sure.

Somewhere nearby, Leah sobs and Loki immediately lets go, feeling like an utter imbecile.

He removes his shirt and inspects the wounds instead, which have scabbed enough for him to be able to take a shower. He doesn’t last long because he’s strangely disgusted with himself, _utterly disgusted_ , and not even the water from the fancy rainfall showerhead cascading onto his shoulders and his back can help with that feeling.

_She had to experience …_

“Leah?” Loki murmurs, flinching when his own fingers brush his skin even if all he does is massage shampoo into his hair and soaping himself. “Are you there?”

There comes no answer except for a soft whimper that makes him want to puke all over again even though it wouldn’t do anything because his stomach is entirely empty. He had blueberry pancakes over twenty-four hours ago and then nothing. Nothing but a scotch—well, two glasses of scotch—and a chemical dinner pressed into a white pill.

 _Fuck_.

Loki is out of the shower in under eight minutes. He reaches for a towel and dries himself off as quickly as he can. There are three bathrobes on a hook by the door—all silk, one black, one gray, one deep red—and he grabs the first, his heart still racing.

“Nikias?”

No answer either.

 _Damn them all_.

“What the fuck did you get us into?” Loki snaps, feeling utterly ridiculous because there’s been radio silence in his head for quite a while now. “I know this is your fault and I swear to God you’re gonna pay for it the next time you make an appearance!”

He starts crying again, wiping the tears away with the sleeve of the bathrobe.

 _Dammit_.

 _Focus_ , _you dolt_.

He brushes his teeth and curses himself, his nerves itching in his brain, crawling, crawling, crawling. There are still no razors.

 _Ugh_.

When he dares to leave the bathroom again, he finds the apartment empty, Thanos nowhere in sight. He inspects the backpack he brought because he is finally awake enough to think about it again but, of course, the envelope with the money—the nineteen-hundred dollars minus what he paid for the motel and the clothes and the hair dye—is gone. And even if it weren’t, it wouldn’t have done him any good because it turns out that Thanos has installed a fancy, expensive-looking silver keypad lock on his apartment door.

Meaning that Loki is trapped inside this building.

 _Trapped yet again_.

 _Mamma Mia_ , _here I go again_. _My my_ , _how I can resist you_?

Where the hell did that come from?

He walks over to the balcony, the door of which isn’t locked, and steps outside. There’s a cool morning breeze that pulls at his wet hair, chilling him to the core. He reaches for the banister, clasping it with both hands, leaning forward. They’re far up, the street below him buzzing with the hum of big city life. Loki doesn’t remember which floor he’s on exactly but he knows that he won’t survive the fall if he swings himself over the railing from this height.

 _Hela should have had an abortion_.

Loki grabs the banister tighter. Leans forward, bending over until he can feel gravity tug at him, and pushes forward a little, just a little, _fuck_ , _fuck_ , _fuck_ , he’s gained too much momentum and he’s sure he’ll plunge, _fuck_ , it’s too late, he can’t, he won’t ever … In the moment that follows, that meaningful, lasting-half-a-lifetime fraction of a second in which he manages to pull himself back up, stumbling backwards, panting, he is both disappointed and grateful.

That was a narrow escape.

The narrowest of narrow escapes in the history of narrow escapes.

He knows it. Feels it, in every bone, every nerve, every heartbeat.

Loki stands there for a minute—or maybe five, ten, twenty—and tries to breathe.

He stands there until his body signals him how thirsty it is.

Eventually, Loki manages to compose himself again enough to tiptoe to the fridge, on the door of which sticks a post-it note telling him to make himself at home because Thanos will be a while, _hooray_ , and gulp down three glasses of cooled water. There’s a lot of food too—exquisite food, not the kind of cheap crap Hela contents herself with—but when he thinks about that girl taking his penis into her mouth to suck on it, the appetite he might have worked up by staring at the food otherwise is instantly spoiled.

There’s booze though and soda, too, which is promising.

He fixes himself a generous drink and then looks for a phone, wondering who he’d even call if he found one because he doesn’t have Hela’s number memorized and even if he had, she might not have her phone with her in the hospital. Wondering too, albeit very briefly, why he doesn’t have a phone of his own. Maybe the bullies in school stole it before he stopped going and Hela didn’t have enough cash to spare to buy him a new one because, well, drugs are kind of expensive.

Scotch in hand, he walks to inspect Thanos’s room but it’s looked too. Of course it is but Loki isn’t a fool. He knows how the mechanism of a run-of-the-mill door with a simple, spring-latch knob look works and where to put pressure to make it snap open. It’s basic physics. Frictional force moves objects. Everyone knows _that_. He searches for something to slide into the crack between the door and the frame. A credit card would be the obvious choice but, of course, the big angry bastard didn’t leave any of those lying around.

After a brief search and a stop by the fridge to pour himself a refill, Loki decides on a knife with a slim blade, which he inserts into the lock until he feels the tip hit its back. There are the pins. Now, he just needs to apply the right kind of force to them. He rocks the knife up and down while moving it slightly in and out of the lock, applying the same slight rotation that turning a key inside it would produce. It’s not that hard. You just need to know how a lock mechanism looks like from the inside, which Loki does, of course, because he’s smart. _Duh_. After maybe half a minute, the lock clicks open.

Voilà.

He can’t help but smile to himself even though, at first glance, there isn’t much to see and he wonders why the hell Thanos even locked it. There is a safe, yes, but of course this one is locked too, this should have been a no-brainer really, but other than that he can’t see anything suspicious. Until he sees the books piled up on a dresser. Pretty disturbing books about the teenage psyche and human development and about what children look for in caregivers that stir up the scotch sloshing in his empty stomach and scream all sorts of things straight into Loki’s face. Sick weirdo. Pedophile. Pervert.

 _Fucking pervert_.

And Loki let him … He let his lackeys … He let Leah …

 _Nope_ , _let’s not think about that_.

There isn’t a phone in here either and that’s also not surprising because landlines are a dying breed. There isn’t even a gun that Loki could use to blast the lock on the front door. Not that he knows how to use a gun but it can’t be that hard to figure out. Loki’s brain is good at figuring stuff out after all. He sifts through the wardrobe and the chest of drawers too, for good measure, finding nothing except for fancy suits and other shit, each item of clothing probably more expensive than Hela’s rent.

With a sigh, Loki gives up and heads for the guestroom, inspecting that wardrobe instead. There are different clothes in different sizes—dresses, skirts, blouses, bras, leggings, leather pants, tops, shirts. Pretty much everything for everyone, which, of course, means that Loki isn’t the first person Thanos kept locked up here as his personal little pet and it makes him wonder when he’ll be discarded.

Not that this would be such a bad thing after last night but, at least, the place doesn’t smell of pot or sex. Or death.

Loki sifts through the clothes and, following a sudden impulse, he tries on a bra that he stuffs with socks and takes a careful look at himself in the mirror because if Nikias doesn’t identify as a man, maybe he doesn’t either. Maybe that’s just another thing that’s somehow … off. Wearing a bra doesn’t feel right either, though, and he puts it back, instead opting for a pair of black pants—jeans, not leather, because _dammit_ , this guy seems to be oblivious to the existence of sweatpants, which is a fucking shame really—and a long-sleeved gray shirt that is about two sizes too big for him.

Loki leaves the room with his scotch and the silken bathrobe in a crumpled heap on the floor.

There isn’t much to do after that except getting drunk and watching TV, which is what he ends up doing after half-heartedly fixing himself a mushroom-spinach omelet and forcing it down his throat because he knows damn well that not eating anything at all won’t help him hold his liquor.

* * *

“Have you been in my room?”

It’s the first thing Loki hears through a sleepy, scotch-induced haze when Thanos finally strides into the apartment, the world outside already fading into dusk. He tries to shake himself awake, the horror movie he’d fallen asleep to still playing on the huge flat-screen facing the couch.

“I was bored,” Loki offers gleefully. It turns out he’s just the perfect kind of drunk. Pleasantly dazed but not yet too intoxicated enough for vertigo and a blurry vision. “And I was looking for something to sell on the street because you took my money.”

“You mean the envelope _you_ took out of El’s desk?” Thanos glowers at him but he doesn’t lose it. Not yet, _ha_. “You already got paid for that gig. That was her share.”

 _Her share for doing what_ , _exactly_? Loki wants to ask but doesn’t because he doesn’t really want to know everything about his Mom’s life as a criminal. “I never got paid,” he protests instead but, then again, he thinks when Thanos glares at him as if he’s grown horns, maybe Nikias got paid. _Yikes_. _Just focus_. _This isn’t the first time you’re doing this_. “Not for the whipping, at least,” he hastily corrects himself.

“No because that’s something you asked for, something I’m providing for you,” Thanos replies smoothly. _Dammit it all to hell_ , _he’s clever alright_. “Plus, you’re living here, aren’t you? I pay you with food and accommodation. You don’t need anything else.”

Loki shrugs. “I need make-up, nail polish, clothes that haven’t been worn by others before me, razor blades, that sort of thing.” He pauses for breath. “A phone.”

“You don’t need a phone,” Thanos scoffs. “And you can’t have any blades either because we need to save that beautiful pale skin of yours for other purposes.”

Loki gulps, a stab of excitement rapidly followed by a stab of disgust violently thrusting into his stomach.

“But I’ll take you shopping if that’s what you want,” concedes Thanos, reaching for his hair again. Fuck this guy and his fucking hair fetish. “I owe you an apology after all. Last night wasn’t supposed to happen. The girls messed up.”

 _Huh_? _Interesting_.

“It’s what I want, yes. I also want to call my Mom,” Loki blurts out because it’s now or never. It’s not often that one encounters Thanos in a semi-generous mood. He pouts, just a little, _don’t overdo it_ , and then glances up at him, a little shyly, making his best puppy eyes. “I just want to know how she’s doing. Please.”

Thanos looks skeptical, deep furrows burrowing into his brow. “Since when do you actually care about El? And since when do you call her ‘Mom’?”

Loki bites his lip. So much for not yet too intoxicated. _Think_ , _you useless idiot_. “You know, sometimes, you don’t realize what people truly mean to you until they’re almost, well, gone.” He tries a sad smile that usually looks very convincing on his oh so delicate face. “What if she dies in rehab because there are complications and I never get a chance to say goodbye?”

The tears that sting into Loki’s eyeballs aren’t even all fake but Thanos still glares at him with suspicion. “You’ve been acting odd lately.”

 _Because I’m no longer Nikias_ , _bitch_. “The woman who gave me life is dying. I’m sure you’ll understand that, regardless of how difficult our relationship might be, this is a little … disturbing for me.”

Thanos draws a sharp breath. “You won’t tell her about the house?”

Loki shakes his head. “Promise.”

Eventually, Thanos exhales a long breath quavering with reluctance, pulls out his phone and unlocks the screen, dialing for him.

“What do you want?” Hela gasps into the phone, coughing out the last word. She sounds awful. Truly awful.

“It’s me,” says Loki.

“Kiddo.” Her voice is raspy, her breathing heavy. “You’re … with him? Are you … okay? Did he … Look, I’m so sorry about …”

“I’m alright,” says Loki. _I almost killed myself for real this morning and cried close to a hundred times today but_ , _right this very second_ , _I’m alright because I’m drunk on scotch and my emotions are subdued_. “I’m staying at his place.”

“What? Why?”

 _Because your place stinks_. “Yeah, he, uh, said I could stay with him when he found me in front of your locked door after I called the ambulance and ran away,” Loki lies smoothly, wondering for a second why he doesn’t possess a key to his own home. Isn’t that _weird_?! “Until you get back.”

Something flickers through Thanos’s eyes.

“Did he”—another cough—“touch you?” asks Hela, her voice suddenly very panicky. “Hurt you?”

“No, Mom,” says Loki with all the conviction he can muster because this _isn’t_ a lie after all. And even if Thanos did touch the body, it was Nikias who inhabited it at the time. “I’m alright, I promise. Just get better, okay?”

“Good. I’ll come get you,” Hela rasps. “Just hang in there.”

* * *

Loki does.

Tries.

Thanos takes him shopping—which results in a brand-new wardrobe and the discovery that Loki is a born shoplifter, who can slip a pack of Wilkinson’s into his pocket unobserved in a quick moment in which everyone else’s attention in the drugstore is otherwise occupied—and then he takes him to a fancy restaurant later that night. The food is amazing; or at least it would be if Loki weren’t too disgusted with himself to enjoy it. He discovers that he likes red wine, though.

Thanos is actually nice to him and doesn’t lose his shit; not even when Loki tries to pick a fight on the drive home because, in a sudden outburst of seething hot self-hatred, he yearns to hurt. Thanos doesn’t take the bait, so he puts his new blades to the test as soon as the bastard falls asleep. He cuts deep into the spot where the upper thigh meets the groin on either side, carving upward lines into his flesh that arch towards his scrotum, watching the blood drip onto the floor beneath his sorry skinny ass.

Thanos is furious when he discovers Loki in the bathroom in the middle of the night where he fell asleep on the warm fluffiness that is a plushy bathmat on underfloor heating after the tension finally streamed out of him, leaving only the pleasant dullness of too much wine. He yanks him up, smacks him across the face and yells unintelligible things as he mops the floor. He takes the blades away too, all of them, grunting.

He sets out to buy a new bathmat first thing the next morning, which Loki finds quite ridiculous but, at least, it gives him a little alone time. As soon as Thanos exits through the door, Loki tries to find the ingredients for homemade fingerprint powder. He grabs a pencil, chops back the wood with a box cutter and frees the lead to make powdered graphite by scraping it over the cutter’s edge with gentle motions, watching how the tiny particles flutter into an espresso cup before mixing it with an equal part of talcum powder. Thanos doesn’t possess any art supplies because he’s obviously not very creative except, of course, when it comes to manipulating people, so Loki has to use a pastry brush, which works just as well. At least Thanos, unlike Loki’s mother who doesn’t even possess sewing needles, _has_ useful stuff at home.

 _Zero, one_ , _five_ , _seven_ , _eight_. Unless he pressed one or more of them twice, which would be unfortunate but is always possible, it’s a five-digit code that separates him from the other side of the door. One-hundred-twenty possible combinations. It’s doable—he knows he did it before—but first of all he needs to clean up before Thanos smells a rat. He wipes the keypad lock clean with a towel, flushes the wood shreds down the toilet, rinses the espresso cup and the brush and dries them with a towel. He’s just closing the kitchen drawer when the boss walks in again, announcing that he has a new job for Loki.

“I don’t want it,” Loki snaps, hoping that Thanos will not notice the two pencils missing from his toolbox any time soon.

“What you want is not my concern,” Thanos shoots back. “Get dressed.”

As if he has a choice.

Thankfully, it’s nothing sexual. It’s like the first job, only slightly better because it’s the not the creepy ass Maw guy who’s doing the whipping—it isn’t even whipping this time but hot candle wax on his back, which pleasantly hurts like motherfucking hell—but a customer. A nice, shy customer with gentle hands, who fucking asks him for permission to burn him. Loki doesn’t know if customer is the right term though because the business relationship between Thanos and these guys doesn’t disclose itself to Loki at once.

It takes him a while to get to the bottom of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks goes to Black Feather for encouraging me to make Loki aspec if that's how I've been envisioning him. I've been toying with the idea for a while but didn't really have the courage. Whyever not, you may ask, and I thought, especially after receiving a hateful comment I had to chew on for quite a bit, I just didn't want to project too much, y'know. But eventually I realized that this is my story, which I'm writing for free (lol, aren't we all insane?), and that I can do whatever the hell I want with it and the characters I created. 
> 
> Still, I'm somewhat at odds with this chapter, even after editing it 148,713 times. Maybe you can tell me why, if at all, or what parts don't work?


	17. I need my brother back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor and Frigga try to cope with the situation and with one another after he is discharged from the hospital and it works out splendidly. Odin gets called out on his bullshit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw mention of past child abuse

“What are you up to, honey?” asks Frigga when Thor walks towards the kitchen, pushing past where his mother is sitting at the dining room table in a bathrobe flung over her pajamas, flipping through a folder with paperwork, looking incredibly old and even more tired. He wonders if she’ll ever look beautifully energetic and full of life again or if the incident has scarred her forever.

He homes in on the fridge and opens the door a little more forcefully than strictly necessary. “What does it look like I’m up to?”

“It looks like you’re stress-eating,” Frigga points out carefully as Thor reaches for the plate with the delicious chocolate cake that Maria Stark brought yesterday when his mother invited her over for coffee. “You had breakfast two hours ago.”

“So? I’m a grown man! I can eat as much as I want to without you having to lose any goddamn sleep over it!” Thor fires back.

“Thor, please.” She tries to be reasonable. Of course she does. Always so fucking reasonable ever since he was discharged from the hospital on Halloween and almost snapped again because they used to celebrate Loki’s birthday the day after and the kitchen used to be full of cake and candy for a week. When he came back a few days ago, though, the house felt empty and hollow without his brother in it, lifeless even. It hurt like hell to walk past Loki’s vacant room when he climbed the stairs.

It hurt like hell to wake up in his childhood bedroom on November 1st with no excited baby brother jumping onto him and shaking him awake who he could wrap up in a big, squashing birthday hug. There were no gifts, no candles, no cake, no laughs; just a giant vacuum that has threatened to suck him in ever since he crossed the threshold of his parentsʼ home. 

It still hurts, to think that his brother might have killed himself after what happened. It’s no longer really a might have in his mind either, truth be told. Thor is generally a very optimistic person—naïve, some people would say, maybe gullible even—but it’s been too long.

Thor might be a dumbass sometimes but he isn’t a fool. If Loki _had_ been out there, he would’ve been found by now.

The hurt is further exacerbated by the physical pain and the fact that Thor is exempted from his classes for the rest of the semester. Under any other circumstance this would have been great news because he hates law school with a passion but now it just means that he has far too much time to think as he’s forced to lie on his ass and do pretty much nothing all day. Plus, he’s cooped up here with his mother, who insisted he come back home with her because she didn’t trust him not to secretly exercise in his own—Tony’s—apartment and who even locked their own goddamn gym in the basement, hiding the key as if he was still a little kid. Being treated like a fucking child after living alone for a while is nothing short of a nightmare that drives him up the wall a little more each day.

It also drove his fist _into_ the antique clock his Dad paid so much money for the second day after he came home from the hospital and Frigga wasn’t particularly happy about _that_. She told him that he’d have to go into anger management therapy then, which did nothing whatsoever to calm him down. Quite the contrary. They fought like they never fought before because Frigga only tries to be reasonable when it comes to him. When it comes to herself and her own actions, she’s pretty much blind.

She still acts as if Loki will just walk in through the door any minute. She went grocery shopping the other day and brought home passionfruit juice even if Loki was the only one who ever drank it. She also cleaned both of their rooms in Thor’s absence, even bought Loki a new mattress because the old one was soaked with blood and urine. She spends a lot of her time cleaning up in general—sweeping the porch with a broom every day, dusting off and polishing shelves, cleaning the windows, miraculously she always finds new things that supposedly need a good scrubbing—even if they used to employ people for that kind of shit in the past. Thor is sure the house never looked this spotless before but when he tried to talk to her about it—“Do you really think Loki would care about how this place looks if he came back?”—she played the issue down, telling him that his father might want to put the house on the market at some point and that she’d better start making it presentable.

 _Yeah_ , _right_.

As if their house has ever been anything else besides presentable.

“She’s probably in denial,” Tony Stark texted back when he complained about his mother’s behavior, which did next to nothing to lift his spirits because being in denial suggests that everything will hit her later and he is even less prepared for that than he was for coming home to his mother having turned into a neat freak.

On top of all that, mothers tend to shower their children with love and care. Not that this is generally a bad thing but his Mom tends to overdo it and now that Loki is gone, he’s receiving all the Frigga love and attention in the entire universe. Which is simply too much; especially the way she reminds him to do his physio exercises every goddamn day as if there’s a fucking chance in hell he’d forget them or the way she’s watching what and how much he eats like a hawk.

It’s pretty fucking ironic too that he’s fighting with her now that his Dad fucked off to Norway to spend time with his brother’s family, think about his life choices and recover from his heart attacks, leaving even his beloved firm behind just like that. Well, he left it in Frigga’s hands, more or less, and she handles it because she hasn’t found a suitable candidate for the assistant manager’s position yet. This isn’t a surprise, really, because both of his parents are hypercritical perfectionists. The only thing that’s surprising is that she handles the firm on top of all the cleaning and all the fussing over him, which is a miracle really.

Or maybe not because Thor always suspected his mother to secretly have superpowers.

“Some people need to keep busy to avoid their emotions, you know,” was Tony’s far more logical explanation, followed by a snort. “Believe me, I would know.”

Thor still can’t decide whether it’s a good or a bad thing that his Dad “took a step back” because, most of the time, he’s too damn furious to think straight; which is another reason Frigga keeps bugging him about anger management. It might be a good thing because Uncle Tyr and Aunt Zisa are decent people and maybe they’ll be able to get through to Odin that he acted like a monumental dick. But then again, what train wreck of a father wouldn’t even speak to his own son after said son awoke from a fucking coma?

Thor isn’t sure he’ll ever forgive his Dad for it and he tries not to think about it, not ever and certainly not now. He tries to drag his mind back to the present moment.

“Well, what have _you_ been doing just now?” Thor asks her as he shovels a slice of cake into his mouth with his bare hands. “Divorce stuff?” He spits it almost because, well, leave it to his parents to break up during the height of a family crisis when they’ve managed to put up with each other _for years_ before everything turned to shit. “Because that’s so fucking important right now,” he adds even though his mouth is far too full to speak.

Frigga blows out a breath. “No, actually I was looking for the full names and contact details of the people we employed when your brother was little. Your nanny, his preschool teacher, the private tutor who homeschooled him before he went to elementary. I’ve tried but I can’t remember either their last or their first names.”

The huge bite of cake gets stuck in Thor’s throat and he has a hard time swallowing it. He wants to ask why but there is no need. “Amora Martínez,” he chokes out because after seeing her in his nightmare in the hospital, all the buried memories came back. How she moved through the house like a dancer, her blond curls falling over the naked, tanned shoulders her green summer dress exposed. How she brought him candy when he was little. How she told him that most grown-ups were nasty when he complained about one of his teachers scolding him because he was too loud in class. How she assembled Lego trucks with him. Well, _for_ him, actually, because he was never patient enough, not even as a kid, to sit through the process of building the goddamn things whereas Loki used to spend hours in complete solitude to assemble the most complex Lego models of architectural structures or jigsaw puzzles or—

“Did she,” Frigga is saying, her brow furrowing with concern. “I can’t believe I didn’t ask this sooner but … I mean, after how you reacted in the hospital, it never seemed …” She clears her throat. “Did she ever do anything to _you_ , honey?”

Thor shakes his head. “No, never. She was always nice to me.”

Frigga’s face is suspicion incarnate. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, mother,” Thor spits but his voice is already breaking. “I’m the lucky one, remember? People only ever have it in for Loki.”

At that, his mother falls silent because they both know it’s true and there’s nothing either one of them can do about it because, _fucking hell_ , Loki always ends up being hurt by everyone; even by his own father, his own brother, his own family.

Thor whips out his phone, smearing chocolate all over it and his gray sweatpants. He actually has to lick his fingers clean before he can unlock his screen. 

“What are you doing?” Frigga asks even though he’s sure she knows exactly what he’s doing.

“The same thing you would have done the second you’d come across her full name in your paperwork,” Thor replies as he types ‘Amora Martínez’ into the google search bar, wondering why he didn’t do that kind of research himself earlier because, _dammit_ , since when is being in a coma an excuse to stop taking care of your little brother? Frigga gulps and the pinched expression on her face makes it obvious that she’s about as emotionally prepared for what such a search would yield as he is.

It takes a few seconds for the words on his phone screen to make sense to his brain but when they do, he feels like puking his guts out, every craving for food instantly forgotten.

“What?” Frigga asks.

Thor holds the phone out to his mother and watches her own features derail when she reads the headline. _Thirty-seven-year-old nanny Amora Martínez on trial for molesting a four-year-old boy entrusted to her care_. He clicks on the link and together they stand bent over the kitchen island, reading about how Amora was arrested by the police on May 13, 2011—about ten months after she stopped working for them—because another concerned suburban mother had filed charges against her.

A few paragraphs into the article, Thor’s eyes can’t even make out the words anymore because his vision is blinded by rage and despair, his world tearing at the seams. “How,” he manages, breath hitching, his phone slipping out of his hands, dropping onto the counter with a thud. “How could you … She was with us all this time …”

Frigga’s face is unhealthily pale. “I swear to you, honey, I—”

“ _This_ mother filed charges after a few _months_!” Thor hollers before he can stop himself. “And what did _you_ do? For years, you let her … You …” But, then again, _he_ let her, too, didn’t he? He just wasn’t _there_ to stop it because he … Thor lets out a scream that sounds animalistic even to his own ears.

“Honey, look at me,” Frigga coos, trying to reach for his vibrating face with her hands. “I know I’ve missed a lot of opportunities to help your bro—”

“You think?!” Thor roars and, fueled by a sudden impulse, he smashes the plate in front of him on the ground, cake and shards of porcelain flying everywhere. “You were fucking _blind_!”

“Thor, please,” Frigga begs but it’s already too late by then. Thor is already exploding, his whole body wound tighter than a guitar string, aching to blow off all this steam, aching to revenge his brother, aching to change the past and not leave Loki in this house with Amora to play with Tony next door, and he whirls around and blindly grabs stuff from the counter, hurling it onto the floor.

“Thor, stop it!” Frigga cries, tears springing to her eyes. “You’re _scaring_ me!”

“ _That_ is scaring you?” Thor yells as he grabs the kitchen scales, sending it crashing into one of the windows. “Really? This is your worst nightmare after what you just read? A few broken dishes? Is that _really_ your concern right now?”

“ _You_ are my concern right now, Thor,” Frigga gasps. “You are out of control.”

“And I have every fucking right to be,” he snaps and then slams a frying pan into the ceramic glass cooktop, which makes Frigga shriek.

“You need to see someone,” she whispers as if THAT is in any way important right now. “You need help processing—”

“See someone?” Thor echoes, too stunned to destroy anything else for the moment. “You mean like a fucking shrink?” He snorts a laugh. “I’m not the one who was abused by that bitch! I’m not the one who’s crazy, okay? I’m just—”

“I didn’t say you were! But you—”

“—going crazy because y’all are _making_ me crazy!”

“You need help,” whispers Frigga, her face still ashen. “You’re losing yourself!”

“I don’t need help!” Thor yells back and, suddenly, he’s crying too, hot tears burning in his throat, in his eyes, on his cheeks. “I need my brother back! I need him to be okay! I need Dad to stop being _so Dad_! I need to go for a fucking run!” Frigga stretches out her hand, trying to reach him, but he slaps her away, gasping heavily. “A shrink won’t freaking fix any of that, mother!”

“No, but a shrink might help you deal with the horrible things _you_ had to experience in healthier ways than demolishing my kitchen,” his Mom yells as he kicks the fridge so hard that his foot leaves a dent in the side. “You know I’ve been trying to find someone for my—”

“Well, good for you!” Thor roars. “Maybe that person will finally fix your helicoptering issues because you’re fucking suffocating me! How the hell did Loki even put up with your smothering for so long?”

Her mouth gapes open and her face goes even whiter than before. It goes the corpse kind of white. Her eyes are shimmery but the tears don’t spill. She just stares at him, bloodless, trembling lips standing apart, too shocked to speak, too shocked to cry, and rightly so because, _holy fucking heck_ , how could he say something like that to his own mother?!

“Mom, I …” _I’m sorry_ , Thor wants to say but it’s so fucking cheap that the words catch in his throat. He looks at the chaos around him and a sickening kind of embarrassment seeps into him.

“Maybe you should go back to your apartment then,” Frigga whispers after what feels like ten minutes of crushing silence.

“Mom, please. I’m sorry. I … I didn’t mean that. Loki loved you and so do I.” Thor is bawling now, dissolving into huge, disgusting sobs. “You’ve been doing so much for us, I … I’m sorry. That was such an awful thing to say. I didn’t mean it.” He almost chokes on the words. “I didn’t mean it, Mom, I swear. I’m sorry. I love you.”

It takes a while, way too long actually, before his mother’s arms finally sweep his trembling body into a hug, her Patchouli lotion wafting into his nose. “I love you too, honey,” Frigga whispers into the side of his neck, cradling him close. “But if you want to stay here, you’ll have to get help, honey. Why don’t we go together?”

“What? Like a family therapy thing or something?” Thor asks when he is finally man enough again to let go of his mother’s comfort, a far-too-derisive snort coming out through his snotty nose.

“What would be so bad about that?” Frigga asks him, her blue eyes piercing his.

 _Except that it makes us look like a bunch of awful fucking losers who can’t get their messy life straightened out on their own_? “I don’t know, it’s just … weird.”

“Whatever Loki has been going through, he hasn’t been going through it just because of the way his brain works,” says Frigga and the urgent certainty in her tone makes him feel as if Loki is indeed still alive. It gives him hope even though that’s probably dumb and dangerous. “He grew up here, with you, with me, with your father. We all played our part. And if we want to help him, which I know you do, the least we can do is put some effort into working on the family dynamic as a whole, don’t you think?”

“Damn,” says Thor, wiping his face, a small laugh escaping his lips. “Dr. van Dyne really brainwashed you, huh?”

“Yes,” says Frigga, smiling her beautiful smile. God, how much he still needs her even if he is, by all accounts, a grown man. In that moment, he’s relatively sure his universe would instantly unravel if anything ever happened to her. “But in a good way. You’ll see. I know it’s awkward at first but it turns out to be very liberating.”

* * *

“I think you’re a goddamned coward.”

The sentence hangs in the air between them for a few heavy moments before Odin finds the courage to tear his gaze away from the coast to lock eyes with his younger brother Tyr on the porch of his Norwegian family home. “I suppose that’s a fair assessment,” he sighs, swirling his glass of scotch.

“I-I just don’t understand,” Tyr mutters and Odin knows very well that he doesn’t. They might be brothers but they have very little in common. “You had the perfect family, a wonderful wife, two beautiful sons and you just let it all slip away? And then you just … fled the States after what happened to your boys?”

Yes, he did. It sounds simple, the way Tyr is putting it, when in reality it is not that simple. Nothing ever is but he knew he’d have a hard time getting that across to his brother, which is why he put off visiting his family for about two weeks after landing in Norway. Coming here was another spontaneous, instinctual decision he made after another unsuccessful day of walking aimlessly around the City of Angels with a formidable hangover and realizing, with each passing minute, what a fool’s errand he had embarked upon. Realizing how clouded his thinking had become over the past years. Realizing that he was hardly making rational choices anymore, except in court. That he needed to clear his head to come to terms with Frigga’s decision and what happened between Loki and Thor. Alone, far away from all the pressure, all the tears, all the emotional hysteria. That he needed to breathe.

Breathe he did, a lot of see air, and, if anything, he found that self-reflection is a rather painful affair. “Yes, I did,” says he.

Tyr hauls out his best puzzled face, the one with the slightest trace of exasperation. “Why?”

“Because this,” Odin makes a vague gesture, indicating the house behind them, “doesn’t seem to come as easily to me as it does to you.” He grimaces, feeling a little sick, even though they’re only on their second drink. “There is too much of father in me.”

At that, his brother’s face falls because they both grew up in the same house, a little less than two miles from where they are sitting right now, enduring their own father’s temper raining down on them whenever Bor was in a foul mood, promising each other faithfully that they would never harm their own children. That they would be _better_. “Don’t tell me you … You didn’t lay hands on your boys, did you?”

At least one of them kept his promise, Odin thinks and remains silent; which is answer enough in every language.

“Jesus!” Tyr exclaims. “Odin!”

He’s the younger one, if only by eighteen months, but he’s far more reasonable, far more composed. Always has been. It often made him feel like the little brother when they were younger.

“I suppose I don’t trust myself around them anymore,” Odin concedes softly and even as he speaks the words, he knows them to be true. “I thought …” His words trail off because there is no way to say what he wants to say. Hell, he doesn’t even truly know what it is he _wants_ to say. “When Loki … You don’t know how he can be. I’d say he’s a handful but it’s way more than that. He’s a psychological wreck. He’s driving you crazy and I … I tried to keep my distance after I first … overreacted. I told myself that I wasn’t needed anymore because Frigga ignored all my advice when it came to both our children but that’s nothing but a lie I’ve told myself. I shut Loki out so I wouldn’t hurt him because he drove me crazy but the more I shut him out, the more he tried to provoked me with his … his … God, that boy. He has so many issues. You should see him now. I dare say you wouldn’t even recognize him anymore. He started wetting the bed again!”

“Well,” Tyr sighs, huffing a frustrated laugh, not having any of it. Odin doesn’t know if that is a good or a bad thing. It’s certainly not the reaction he hoped for. “ _We_ drove father crazy, remember? But if you think back, did we ever really _do_ anything crazy? I don’t think so. We were just kids. Loki is just a kid, you know. Thor too, even if he’s probably convinced he’s all grown up by now. Kids need their father. You _know_ that.”

He does. They both do.

“Especially at a time like this. You _owe_ your family this much,” says Tyr, his tone urgent. “I really think you need to go home, brother.”

* * *

_And just in case you were wondering what kind of Lego models I pictured kid!Loki assembling in his room:_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanna hug Thor so badly *holds out tissue box for everyone*
> 
> And yes, I know that Tyr isn't Odin's brother in the MCU or the comics (where he's his son, actually, if I remember correctly) but he's the only old-ish Asgardian character for whom I have an actor's face in front of my inner eye and I need that sort of thing to visualize.


	18. A family history of violence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This entire family needs tons of therapy, wbk. The question is: Will they accept it or not?

“I’m afraid you’ll have to stay,” clarifies the doctor and Hela has to work up every last bit of her mental resolve to not explode into the fat old prick’s sagging face.

As it turned out, reaching complete resolution of all withdrawal symptoms in a case as severe as hers, as one of her detox doctors so poetically phrased it, wasn’t a straight-forward job at all. Hela was moved to the hospital a while back due to an undoubtedly drug-abuse-related pulmonary infection after talking to the kid on the phone, which, apparently, was why she couldn’t stop coughing, and, after stabilizing her, they shipped her off to rehab against her will. Detox centers are tolerable because they just flush the drugs out of your system without all the humiliating and offensive therapy crap. The place she finds herself in now, by contrast, is a treatment center some miles out of town, complete with individual counseling, group therapy, crafts and arts, and all sorts of other new age crap.

“I’m a grown woman,” Hela says, trying to stay calm. Things never work out pretty well when she loses her shit. “You can’t just keep me here.”

“Still, you haven’t been taking very good care of yourself, have you?” the doctor asks before he goes on to inform her that she’s been declared “medically incompetent”, deprived of her right to make her own medical decisions because, apparently, she lost her “decisional capacity” due to prolonged, heavy drug abuse.

“What?!” Hela shrieks, despite her best efforts. “This is fucking ridiculous!”

The doctor shows her a statement signed by her oncologist and two of her detox doctors and then whips out a court order signed and sealed by an LA judge the name of Carmen Witherspoon that sentences her to a minimum of fifty days of mandatory rehab.

“You can’t do that,” Hela bristles. “I am fucking clear in the head for the first time in a decade!”

It took a while to get there, granted. At first, they began to sparsely administer doses of Vicodin in addition to the Methadone when her body reacted with endless violent spasms and vomiting. Pro-tip: Just get yourself severely addicted enough and you can still consume (one of) your drug(s) of choice in detox. _Halle-fucking-lujah_. As far as she knows, they planned to lower the dosage continually but then the lung infection intervened. Now, she’s on a regimen of methadone plus medical marijuana for the pain—thank God for small favors—and they just started re-administering the chemotherapy drugs, which she kinda sorta forgot taking a few weeks ago because they made her bloat horribly and because she hoped her hair would grow back. On top of all that, she’s been diagnosed with stage-four kidney disease, which usually gives patients a life expectancy of a few more years but Hela isn’t kidding herself. Not anymore. Her body is a wreck because she’s been the worst kind of patient under the sun and, as her doctor told her numerous times, she brought this upon herself. She’s no longer trying to tell herself that he was just being nasty or that she’ll beat this against all odds.

No, she’s _reasonable_ now, even if they tell her she’s not.

Sobriety really is the worst kind of nightmare.

“This document here says we can.”

“Who the hell arranged for that crap?” Hela spits even though she has a pretty good idea who. _Screw the bastard_. And the kid is with him, _holy hell_ , and even if he told her the asshole didn’t lay hands on him, she doesn’t believe him anymore than she believed Thanos when he told her he’d leave the kid alone.

“ _You_ did,” says the doctor, surprising her. “You had another psychotic break in the hospital, which is why your doctors involved the State. To save your life.”

 _How awfully dramatic that sounds_. “And who is paying for all of this?” Hela snaps. “I don’t have insurance. I don’t—”

“The expenses are nothing you need to worry about right now. Let’s get you to your room, shall we?”

Okay, granted, there is _one_ good thing about sobriety: Your brain catches up a whole lot faster and people can’t bullshit you that easily. “So, let me get this straight. A bunch of doctors decided I’m ‘medically incompetent’ and put me in this shithole against my will, in which I’ll have to _stay_ against my will for however long it takes you high and mighty people to arrive at the conclusion that I can function on the outside. And yet, _I_ will still get stuck with the bill when I get out even though _I_ just wanted detox, which is already expensive enough, because the courts aren’t required to pay for this shit even if they order it? Did I miss anything?”

The doctor grimaces.

“Go fuck yourself,” Hela fumes.

“This is a gift, Miss Morrison,” the doctor tells her. “And our program is, by all means, affordable. Now, come on.”

 _A gift_? _A fucking gift_? _Yeah, right_. _Since when do you have to fucking pay for your gifts_!? She doesn’t believe him either. She’s sure Thanos wants her out of the way.

“As for your treatment plan, we’ll make sure—”

“What part of ‘go fuck yourself’ didn’t you understand?” Hela storms, attracting the attention of a few people in the hallway who eye her with suspicion and amusement. “Seriously! I’d rather slather myself with my own crap than to listen to another word come out of your mouth!”

One of the other patients giggles.

“Fine,” he huffs before he ushers her forward and then tells her to make herself at home as he puts a schedule—laminated, complete with a floor plan and everything—onto the table in the sparsely furnished room she apparently just moved into for more than a whole fucking month. “Group’s at four. We’ll expect you in the community room.”

Hela collapses into the—not very comfortable—bed and buries her face in the belly of George, the stuffed elephant, trying to stifle a scream. It’s no use. This is her worst nightmare. This is worse than jail or death. She screams and then she starts crying, snuffling like a little girl because there’s no way for her to contact the kid, nope, she has to _earn her phone privileges_ first! _Fuck them_ , _goddammit_. _Fuck the whole world_!

She could call the cops, sure. There’s a phone in the hallway but, then again, how would that do anyone any good? She’s far too caught up in Thanos’s bullshit and if the police decided to raid his place or the house, they’d send the kid straight back to Vegas and Frigga wouldn’t ever forgive her. Maybe the kid wouldn’t forgive her either. No, Hela has to make this right, however long it takes to scout this place and concoct an escape scheme. Okay, she could also do the same thing she told the kid to do and just hang in there. Clean up with her past, suffer through group therapy and individual counseling, convince the doctors that she’s stable enough not to relapse when the fifty days are over.

The kid might not have that much time before Thanos screws him up though.

She releases George and wipes her eyes. Before she gets out, she’ll definitely have to give this thing a washing because it’s soaked with her sweat, her drool, her tears and her vomit.

* * *

“Hello, Mrs. Fjörgyndottir,” says Dr. Janelle Fowley as she shakes Frigga’s hand. To Frigga’s surprise, she is dressed to the nines, wearing a white dress with a broad black leather belt and golden jewelry consisting of bracelets, a necklace and earrings, her dark brown curls spilling onto her shoulders. “Mr. Odinson. It’s good to see you. Please have a seat.”

Now that they’re lowering themselves onto the leather chairs in front of the family therapist she called right after Thor’s outburst a few days ago, she does feel a little tense. Partly because the woman in front of her looks more like a model than anything else but mostly because she thought she’d have a little more time to prepare but then Dr. Fowley’s assistant told her that someone else had canceled their appointment for the week and here they are.

“Why don’t you tell me what brought you to me? I mean,” Dr. Fowley corrects herself with a harrumph followed by an apologetic smile, “you’ve been on the news for quite a while, so I can imagine that there’s a lot going on in your family. Is your son … Is he still missing?”

“Yes,” says Frigga just as Thor murmurs, “Missing or dead,” knocking the air out of her lungs for a short moment.

“So, I presume this is about what happened to you?” Dr. Fowley asks Thor. “I can’t even image how you must feel after having been stabbed by your own—”

“No, that’s not why we’re here,” Thor interrupts the therapist, his gaze flitting around the room, his eyes fleeing hers. “I know why it happened and it’s … It’s alright. I mean, not _alright_ , of course, but it wasn’t Loki’s fault and it’s not why she”—he jerks his head in Frigga’s direction—“called you. She called you because—”

“Honey, how can you—” Frigga cuts in but stops when the other woman holds up her hand to silence her.

“Look, there’s only one way this can work,” says Dr. Fowley. “I want you both to be able to speak your mind freely and let each other finish in this room, alright?”

“Right,” Frigga concedes softly. “Sorry.”

“So, Mr. Odinson,” Dr. Fowley continues. “Why do you think your mother called me?”

He exhales heavily. “Please call me Thor.”

“Alright, Thor. Was there a specific occurrence that you think made her pick up the phone to seek out my help? Something that gave your mother the ‘Okay, now it’s enough, we can’t live this like this anymore’ kind of push?”

“I, uh, scared the shit out of her when I flipped my lid the other day,” Thor blurts out, much to Frigga’s surprise. “Which scared the shit out of me because I don’t … I don’t _want_ to be like this, which is why I agreed to come here eventually.”

“What does ‘flipping your lid’ entail, exactly?”

“Destroying things, hurting people,” whispers Thor, eyes cast down, glued to his sneakers. He still hasn’t made eye contact once with the other woman so far. “Hitting them. Making them afraid of me.”

“He didn’t hit me,” Frigga hurries to say when the therapist eye’s open a little wider. “But he did fly into a rage and threw plates and cooking utensils onto the floor, through the window and onto the stove.” And damn, isn’t she still glad that Odin is too far away to open the bill for the repairs. “It was a very, uh, emotional situation. We found out …”

“A few days before I was stabbed, my brother told me he was abused in our home,” Thor takes over and the therapist’s brown eyes open even wider, suspicion flickering through them like strobe lights through a dark night. “I mean, he didn’t tell me directly but he dropped enough hints for that to be the only possible conclusion.”

“Not by anyone in the family,” Frigga hurries to clarify because Thor is still not looking up, still not bothering to read the doctor’s face. Just as she suspected, her son is still visibly embarrassed by the idea of going to therapy. “Thor suspected their nanny and we googled her name right before things escalated. It turns out she was charged with child abuse after she stopped working for us because she”—her voice breaks a little because the headlines are still a lot to digest—“molested another boy, in another home. He was four years old.”

 _A little child_ , _just like Loki’s alter_. Frigga wills herself not to burst into tears.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” the therapist offers. “That’s a hard thing to come to terms with, especially if you had no idea for years.”

“No kidding,” Thor grunts but composes himself fairly quickly again. “Sorry.”

Dr. Fowley nods. “And that’s what made you so angry?”

“Everything makes me angry,” comes from Thor.

“Can you narrow that down a little?”

“I can’t _do_ anything,” he bristles. “I have no control anymore. I can’t bring my brother or my father back, I can’t change the past, I can’t play football, I can’t … I’m just lying around because I’m bored and so damn pissed all the time and it just makes me wanna scream. It makes me wanna tear down the whole damn house in which so much shit happened!”

Despite everything, Frigga is relieved to discover that her son is still wearing his heart on his sleeve because this character trait of his will make therapy a lot easier.

“Where is your father?”

Thor’s face is hard as stone. “He fucked”—he harrumphs—“took off.”

“I filed for divorce,” Frigga offers when the therapist raises an eyebrow. “Odin is currently staying with his brother in Norway to, well, sort himself out after everything that happened, I guess. He had two heart attacks and—”

“Don’t make excuses for him, Mom,” Thor cuts in sharply, tears springing to his eyes. He wipes them away. “He’s an asshole and a coward. While we’re here trying to deal with all of this, he just bolted as if none of this has anything to do with him even though he was the one who told Loki he had to go to a psych ward _minutes_ after Hela left!”

Frigga briefly sums up the events for the therapist because her son is, apparently, too angry to do so. “On top of that, he hit Loki before,” she concludes softly. “Thor too.”

“He didn’t _hit_ me, Mom,” Thor protests. “He slapped me a few times. A little smack or shove, here and there. That’s nothing compared to how he went against Loki!”

“Who’s making excuses now?” Frigga blurts out before she can stop herself.

Thor just glares at her, bursting with violated pride. “I can defend myself.”

“So, there’s a family history of violence,” Dr. Fowley notes, scribbling a few things onto the notepad in front of her.

“Yes,” says Frigga. “I never thought of it that way until recently but there’s no other way to put it really and it won’t help anyone if I continue to gloss over it. My husb—Odin has a temper, always did. So did his father and so does Thor.”

“So, this isn’t the first time you’ve gotten this angry?” Dr. Fowley asks Thor, whose eyes are flickering dangerously.

“I don’t think I’ve ever gotten _this_ angry,” Thor presses out. “I mean, I got angry before, I even hurt people, but I’ve never been this … constantly angry. I had a lot of ways to blow off steam before my injury and now it all, I don’t know, kinda stays inside, I guess?”

Frigga silently blesses him for being so cooperative.

It’s a typical case of counting your chickens before they hatch because, with the therapist’s next comment, the mood abruptly changes. “That’s understandable. You said your brother’s attack isn’t the reason you’re here today but, then again, given what you’ve talked about so far, it seems to me that it’s the aftermath of this traumatic experience that’s causing you to lose—”

“Traumatic?” Thor cuts in, his eyes going wide. He even looks at her, really looks at her, for the very first time, his eyes blazing. “Why does everyone keep flinging this word about? I’m _not_ traumatized, okay? I’m just _pissed_!”

“Just pissed?” she prompts.

Thor huffs. “Mostly pissed, yeah.”

“What about sad?” asks Dr. Fowley. “Disappointed? Hurt? Betrayed? Desperate?”

Thor huffs again, crossing his arms in front of his broad chest. Despite the fact that he lost some of his impressive muscle mass, his biceps is still bulging under his shirt, throbbing even. He’s his father’s son, no doubt, thinks Frigga. Being accused of having emotions indicative of what they perceive as a weakness isn’t something that goes down well with either one of them. “Why don’t we stick to pissed?”

Dr. Fowley nods after she made another note. “Alright, then why don’t you tell me exactly what happened in your kitchen?”

Thor remains silent, still bristling, so Frigga draws a deep breath before she recounts the events of that day from her perspective, closing with what came back to haunt her in her dreams for the past four nights: “He got angry because he blamed me for what happened. Because I went back to work when Loki was little.”

“Is that true?” Dr. Fowley asks Thor.

“It’s true that she went back to work,” Thor snaps.

“And does that bother you?”

He shrugs.

“Why does it bother you?”

There is a long pause.

“Because she chose to ‘adopt’ my brother,” Thor begins eventually, reluctantly, and Frigga tries to remain calm, to hear him out. “I mean, she knew Loki almost died. She knew … She knew he had to be traumatized and he had tons of issues when he was little, so yes, I think she should have focused on…” His voice trails off. 

“On child care,” finishes the doctor and Frigga is glad that she decided to call a woman. 

“Yes,” Thor says, avoiding her gaze like the plague. “I mean, you don’t just … You don’t just go pursue a career when you have children that need you, right? That’s not … I mean, I’m sorry, Mom, but I don’t understand how work could’ve been more important for you.”

“It wasn’t _more important_ ,” Frigga protests before she focuses the therapist. “Loki is very intelligent, you see. He was far ahead of his age and I got him enrolled in a preschool for gifted children—”

“Which he hated,” Thor cuts in.

“—because he started reading when he was barely three years old. I didn’t do it so that I could go back to work. I did it so he’d have his intellectual needs met and once both of my boys were enrolled in school, yes, I returned to work.” She focuses her son again. “It wasn’t the other way around, honey. I went back to work after you went to kindergarten too. You never had a problem with that, did you?”

“Because I’m not Loki,” Thor snaps. “I never needed you like he did.”

The sentence hangs in the air for a while. “Loki’s therapist told me that I shouldn’t blame myself and I’m trying my best to work on that,” Frigga says eventually, “but it’s hard because Odin and Thor won’t stop blaming me for a having been a bad mother and I just don’t know if they’re right or not. I mean, I tried everything in my power to help my son and—”

“You’re not a _bad mother_ ,” Thor objects. “I didn’t mean that.”

“You told me I was blind,” Frigga replies before the therapist has a chance to reprimand her son for interrupting her. “You told me that I failed to protect Loki from childhood abuse. You just made it very clear once again that you think I made the wrong choice. That I neglected Loki in favor of my career,” Frigga challenges him, her voice shaky because, no matter what Dr. van Dyne said and no matter how hard she’s trying not to, she still blames herself as well. “How does that go together with me _not_ being a bad mother?”

Thor draws a trembling breath.

“ _Do_ you think it’s your mother’s fault that your little brother was abused, Thor?” Dr. Fowley adds softly when her son just swallows.

“I don’t know, maybe. I think it’s my fault too because I went to my friend Tony’s house to play and left Loki there but Tony told me that’s bogus because I was just a child myself and couldn’t have known better but my Mom, I mean, she was a full ass adult, right? Look, I don’t blame her for pursuing a career in general,” he adds when Frigga winces. “I’m not some sexist douchebag who thinks women should stick to being housewives and mothers but …”

“But?” asks the therapist.

“If she hadn’t gone back to work, we wouldn’t have _needed_ a nanny,” Thor whispers. “Amora wouldn’t have had a chance to do these things to my brother.”

“Honey, Amora started working for us when _you_ were three,” Frigga whispers back. “You _liked_ her! You told me she was nice to you. There was no reason to suspect—”

“And isn’t that just the problem,” Thor cuts in, tears welling into his eyes.

“What is?” Dr. Fowley asks softly.

“It’s just not fair,” sobs Thor and, at first, Frigga has no idea whatsoever where he is going with this. “What bothers me the most, I guess, is that I never noticed how unfair everything was for Loki. I am angry because she went back to work but I’m even more angry with her because she lied to us and left us, well, _me_ in the dark. My brother was born in a bar! A bar, okay? It was probably smelly and sticky and his birthmother was an addict. Everyone who was there was probably fucking plastered! They didn’t _love_ him!” He’s half-shouting, half-crying. “And then Hela just discarded him. She left him, on our doorstep, to freeze to death and I … I was born in a hospital and there are photos of it and my Mom was _happy_ when I came along and she hugged me and I had her all to myself for almost five years and Loki … Loki, he had none of that and I never knew that I had it so much easier. Amora looked after me and she didn’t touch me but when she looked after Loki, she …” He wipes his eyes, his breathing heavy.

“Loki had to go through all that alone and _I never knew_. Worse, I always thought Loki was a pussy. I mean, I loved him,” Thor insists and Frigga flinches from the past tense, “I loved him so, so much, but I always thought he was a sissy when, in reality, everything has been so unfair from the very beginning. It’s just … it fucking sucks!”

“It does,” Dr. Fowley agrees when Frigga’s mind goes blank, preventing her from replying.

“And it’s too late now. There’s nothing we can do _now_ because we missed our chance to fucking do something way back when,” Thor finishes, all the fight streaming out of him. He slumps in his chair, looking incredibly small. Forlorn, vulnerable.

“Is that how you feel as well?” Dr. Fowley asks Frigga.

She nods, trying to get her emotions and her breathing under control, and then turns to Thor. “As I told you and your brother before, I did consider telling Loki the truth, especially when I was still sure Hela would return one day but when so many years passed and she never did, I didn’t want to tell your brother something what was unnecessarily going to upset him.”

“But I could’ve protected him better if I had known, Mom,” Thor replies in a small voice and his words hit her like battle ram. “I would’ve made him feel more loved. None of this might have happened if I’d made more of an effort.”

“You love him so much, Thor,” Frigga says softly, reaching for his hand, squeezing it in hers, brushing her lips against the skin on its back. “I sincerely doubt you could have been any more considerate when the two of you were younger. And even recently, you did the best you could, given the, uh, circumstances.”

“We both know that’s not true,” Thor snivels but he doesn’t jerk away from her touch. “But thanks.”

“There’s a few things I’d like to go back to,” says the therapist, focusing Thor. “Do you think you failed your brother?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I was supposed to protect him. That’s what big brothers do. And I …” His voice breaks and Frigga’s heart breaks for her afflicted son. “I didn’t.”

Dr. Fowley chews on that for a moment. “But _you_ are the one that got stabbed. Doesn’t that mean that you’re the victim here?”

Thor shakes his head. “More like collateral damage.”

“So, you think you could’ve prevented this attack if you’d made him feel more loved?”

“Didn’t I just say that?” Thor snaps.

“You did, yes. I am sorry.” Dr. Fowley scribbles something else down. “So, uh, why do you think Loki stabbed you?”

There is another long pause and Frigga is bracing herself for her son’s inevitable reply.

“He didn’t.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As for Frigga, the answer is a solid 90% yes.  
> As for Thor, the jury's still out.  
> And Hela, weeeeell, her track record says it all, eh?
> 
> Thanks for reading. I have the impression that this story doesn't interest as many people as did the first part, probably because it's not as Loki-centered, but the third installment will make up for his lack of screen time in this one, I promise x


	19. A cry for love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor and Frigga keep trying to cope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It ain't easy.

The shrink’s face falls. “I’m sorry?”

“Nikias did,” Thor continues bleakly. “I hesitated when Loki asked me if he could live with me. I pushed him away. He needed me to say ‘yes’ and I didn’t, not immediately, so Nikias took over and avenged him, in a way.”

“I’m not sure I’m following,” Dr. Fowley concedes, her face confusion incarnate.

His Mom inhales deeply and Thor counts to seven before she exhales. Her lucky number, as she claims. “Loki is suffering from dissociative identity disorder.”

“Meaning he had multiple personalities,” Thor clarifies when the shrink’s face remains blank, his tone dripping with annoyance. He doesn’t like her. Doesn’t like her at all. She reminds him of the actress who plays Lucifer’s mother in the Netflix series.

“Although we’ve been told that this is an outdated term,” Frigga hurries to add. Always so correct. If there was an award for political correctness in mental health speak, she’d probably be a nominee.

“Well, in that case,” Dr. Fowley continues after a few beats, “I imagine it would have been quite impossible for you to build a relationship with your brother, isn’t that right?”

“What are you saying?” Thor snaps. He also doesn’t like how she’s trying to paint Loki as the bad guy. Not. At. All. “Loki and I, we had a great relationship before Nikias came along. We were really close, far closer than most brothers, according to my friends.”

“That’s not uncommon if you’ve both been abused by your father,” she says, making Frigga flinch.

“We haven’t been _abused_ by our father,” Thor snarls through gritted teeth because this entire absurd violence narrative makes him want to grab her desk and turn it into a weapon to slam her into the wall. He can feel his veins throbbing in his neck, can feel the heat of raw, untamed anger crawling up his cheeks. “This isn’t the issue here! Are you even fucking listening?” He tries to rein back his temper with a deep breath before it’s too late. “Sorry.”

“What _is_ the issue then?”

“We’re losing our shit in the house,” Thor grunts, jerking his head in his mother’s direction, watching her fiddle with her hands the way she always does when she’s a little on edge. “I’m stuck at home with her because I’m on ‘sick leave’ and she’s home all the time too and she keeps ultra-busy, working in my father’s office, cleaning the house, cooking, and it’s just …”

Frigga looks utterly horrified. “Just what, honey?”

“You’re not talking to me,” Thor whispers, fleeing from her eyes that are searching for his. “I mean not _talking_ -talking. You’re fussing over me but you don’t … You never see the real problem! _Ever_. Not with Loki, not with me. You always go for the superficial, easier-to-deal-with stuff but as soon as it comes to what’s really wrong, like the abuse or the trauma or ‘the incident’, you close your eyes. She can’t even say it,” he almost-yells at the shrink. “She can’t even say ‘When Nikias stabbed you’. She can’t even … Mom, you need to face the truth.”

Frigga is crying now, silent tears streaming down her pinched face.

“What truth?” asks Dr. Fowley.

“That my brother … that Loki is probably, most certainly dead,” Thor whispers, wiping his own eyes when tears well into them with a vengeance. “She acts like he’s not and that we can somehow make this right when he comes back. She dragged us here to help _him_.”

“That’s _not_ true,” Frigga objects, lips quivering. “It’s not,” she assures him, herself, the shrink, the whole universe probably.

“It’s what you said,” Thor shoots back, his throat raw. “You said we needed to ‘put some effort into working on the family dynamic as a whole’ if we want to help Loki.”

“I also said that _you_ were my concern,” Frigga defends herself weakly.

“Why? Because I’m out of control? Because CPS won’t let Loki live with us anymore if I don’t keep a lid on my temper? Because you think I’ll hurt him again? Mom, don’t you realize? This doesn’t matter anymore because he is gone! He’s _gone_ , okay?”

Frigga inhales a sharp breath that comes back out as a guttural sob.

“It’s really interesting how you completely disregard the fact how _you_ have been hurt.” Dr. Fowley’s gaze flits from Thor to Frigga and back to Thor. “Do you feel neglected?” she asks out of nowhere.

A flabbergasted “What?!” slips past Thor’s lips before he can stop himself.

“You seem to feel like your mother’s life revolved around your little brother and that must have been quite a hard—”

“It did,” Thor cuts in, “but that was alright.” Of course it wasn’t always rainbows and cakes and roses and happy little unicorns shitting colorful shooting stars but, when Loki was little, he at least understood that his baby brother needed the lion’s share of Frigga’s—everyone’s—attention and he was always—most times—ready to give, to soft-pedal. It was only when Loki became a teenager that Thor grew a liiiiiittle resentful because Loki, or what he still thought of as Loki at the time, turned into such a jerk and still hogged all the attention despite being such an insufferably bratty, whiny emo asshole all the time. As soon as he realized that the real Loki was still that hurting little kid though, that it was Nikias who was pulling the strings and that Leah needed him too, he instinctively went back into protective mode. It was like flipping a switch.

“Alright?” echoes Dr. Fowley.

“As I said, my brother was … he was fragile, needy, sensitive, scared all the time, crying all the time. She focused on him because I didn’t need her as much. There’s no shame in that.”

“So, you think you’re stronger than your brother?”

“Duh.” It’s a stupid question, thinks Thor, one that doesn’t even warrant an answer. He turns away from the shrink and to his mother. “But now …”

“Now what?” Frigga chokes out.

“Now there’s only the two of us left,” Thor whispers. “Dad is gone, Loki is gone. And you still keep thinking about him.”

“Of course I keep thinking about him! Don’t you?” Frigga asks, lips gaping open.

“Of course I think about him, that’s not … That’s not what I meant … But you’re like ... It’s like you can’t even imagine a life that doesn’t have Loki in it even though you have to because he’s gone,” he says again, feeling utterly hollow. Drained. Exhausted. Too exhausted to cry anymore even. “And I’m trying to deal with it but you … You won’t let me. You just … keep pretending, giving me false hope.”

 _There_. After thirty-seven minutes, the Real Issue is finally out in the open.

Not that Thor knew what the Real Issue was when he walked in here but talking it out kinda unearthed it. Maybe that’s why people go to therapy in the first place. And yes, maybe there’s no shame in missing the forest for the trees after going through the emotional turmoil of getting stabbed by someone you didn’t even know existed, let alone had a grudge against you, until a week before the incident. Maybe that _is_ a semi-valid reason to seek help in the straightening-out-your-own-thoughts department after all.

“Mrs. Fjörgyndottir?” asks Dr. Fowley, passing her a box of tissues. “Would you like to address your son’s concerns?”

Frigga blots most of her tears with two shaking hands. She looks even older now than she did a few days ago. Her eyes are red, the skin around them dry and wrinkled. Her lips are a little chapped. There are gray streaks in her hair everywhere, streaks Thor never really noticed before. “I’m,” she begins, looking utterly devastated.

She does need a haircut and some dye, Thor thinks as he reaches for his mother’s hands, pressing them in his. “I’m sorry about what I said, Mom,” he whispers because suddenly, he can see it clear as day. “About the abuse. If you’d known, you would’ve intervened at once. I acted like you practically handed him over to her and that’s … It’s just … I’m so fucki”—he coughs—“goddamn angry that we didn’t do better when he was Leah’s age.”

“Who is Leah?” asks Dr. Fowley but Frigga ignores her.

“Maybe that’s why I can’t let go,” his Mom whispers, no strength left in her voice. “This can’t be it. We can’t just have no more chances to make this right. That’s … I mean, we did wrong by Hela and she’s still out there somewhere. Who says that Loki …” She lapses into silence.

Thor breathes out through his nose.

“Mr. Odinson,” begins Dr. Fowley.

“Thor,” he corrects her, _again_ , damn near brimming over with annoyance.

“Excuse me, Thor. You see, the connection between a mother and a child is something very special,” the shrink continues, her breath suddenly hitching suspiciously. “A mother can’t just accept that the person she nurtured and raised will be lost to her forever. It provides too much of threat for a mother’s psyche. Clinging to the hope that your child is still alive is a very natural reaction. I understand how it concerns you but, until you haven’t raised children yourself, that kind of connection is impossible to fathom.”

“So, I’m the asshole?” Thor can’t keep—and doesn’t bother to try to keep—himself from asking.

“Nobody said you were an _asshole_ ,” Dr. Fowley insists. “The two of you are merely approaching your brother’s disappearance from different emotional angles.”

“And since you’re probably a mother yourself, you get her angle but not mine,” Thor snaps. “Understood.”

“I didn’t say that,” the shrink persists.

“You had a special connection too,” Frigga says softly, her voice only a little more substantial than a breath. She squeezes his hands back, focusing entirely on him, as if the shrink’s no longer there. “If you listen to your inner voice, do you really think that Loki is dead?”

Thor gulps. “Mom, I …”

“ _Do_ you?” Frigga sobs. “Because I dream of him and it’s almost like … It’s like I can feel the warmth and weight of Loki’s body when I wake up, as if he actually just buried his head in the crook of my neck or laced his fingers through mine only moments ago. I’m _not_ making this up,” she insists when Thor gazes at her, trying to control his body’s natural response to the esoteric nonsense coming out of his Mom’s mouth. “I just know. I’m sorry if that prevents you from dealing with what happened the way you need to, honey, but I just _know_. Pretending I didn’t would be a lie.”

Thor doesn’t know what he believes anymore, not really. Pretending that he also doesn’t secretly fantasize about how it’d be if he saw his baby brother again would be a lie too because there’s so many things left to say to him, to Nikias too, to Leah. Because he never succeeded in making him feel loved and whole and secure. Because he didn’t hug him nearly enough. Didn’t see his smile or hear his laugh nearly enough. Fucking hell, Loki was only fifteen when Nikias stormed off. If he’s really dead already, all he has known so far in life is pain and suffering. Anxiety. Night terrors. Dissociative episodes. Misery. Abandonment. _Abuse_. He never got to graduate. Never got to experience college parties or living by himself. As far as Thor knows, he hasn’t yet fallen in love for the first time or experienced the awkward rush of trying to have actual sex as a randy teenager. He never got his driver’s license for real. He was never really happy. Truly happy. Excited. The silly kind of excited that fills you to bursting and makes you giddy and stupid and hopelessly careless because you’re just so thrilled and high on life.

His Mom is right, isn’t she? _This can’t have been it_. Not after everything Loki had to endure. He deserves another chance … He deserves … Before he even feels the outburst creeping up on him, Thor starts bawling. Dissolving. Unraveling, maybe. There really is no word for what’s happening to him right now. He has buried his head between his legs somewhere along the way of reflecting upon his Mom’s speech and he’s dead convinced that he’ll disintegrate into stardust if he lifts it again.

He just wants to die because if he did, he would see his brother again and maybe he’d able to take better care of him in the afterlife than he did in this one.

Frigga’s hands land on his back, stroking him, trying to soothe him, but it does nothing.

Thor tries to speak but no words come out.

Nothing comes out, except for horrendous sniffling, gasping, and sobbing that’d probably send his Dad to an early grave if he were here to witness his proud and mighty son’s meltdown.

* * *

Frigga is still trembling when she pulls into the driveway of their home, still trying to wrap her mind around Thor’s words, around the finality they evoked, feeling every single one of her nerves itch under the skin of her palms that are clutching the steering wheel far more tightly than necessary. Her heart sits in her chest like a festering splinter, hot and throbbing. Thor is slumped against the passenger seat window, his eyes half-closed, shutting her out. She doesn’t even know how she managed the drive after Dr. Fowley told them the session was over and that they were welcome to come back the same time the following week.

She doesn’t know if she wants to. The way the therapist spoke of Loki after they mentioned his condition seemed offensive and she was very obviously clueless about DID, seemed skeptical of its existence even, but, then again, the encounter provided Thor with the emotional outlet he’d so desperately needed. He’d been tense and buzzing with anger ever since his return from the hospital and now he could finally carry some of the ineffable, physical tension raging inside his body over into the disembodied domain of words. He’s emotionally drained now, depleted even, and, despite the fact that her heart still aches for her boy, she’s secretly glad that his anger has all but evaporated.

It’s a start.

She unbuckles her seatbelt after she pulled up next to Odin’s Porsche in the garage. “Are we good?” Frigga asks, softly squeezing her son’s shoulder.

He shrugs lamely. Well, half-shrugs. It’s a barely recognizable movement. “Will you make spag bol for dinner?”

Frigga feels a rush of love for him surging through her when memories of his childhood come alive in her mind. As a child, he was very talented at sulking but luring him with the promise of one of his three favorite dinners always did the trick. “Do I have to earn your forgiveness now?” she asks before she can stop herself, knowing she ruined the moment before the words are entirely out of her mouth.

Thor exhales a breath but there’s no fight, no anger left in him. In fact, he looks very much like the little boy he once was before football bulked him into the man he is now. “There’s nothing to forgive, Mom,” he mumbles as he unfastens his own seatbelt, his voice small and sad. “We all fucked up.”

She suppresses the urge to call him out on the expletive. “I wish you’d stopped thinking you messed up. You were a child, honey,” Frigga tells him as they walk back into the house. “You were eight years old when I took Loki out of preschool again. _Eight_. You didn’t even … You couldn’t have …”

“I wasn’t talking about that,” Thor rumbles. “I was talking about recently. About how I just … didn’t fucking _realize_ that my brother wasn’t my brother anymore! I should have noticed that something—”

“Hi.”

Frigga’s stomach gives a lurch when Odin, uncharacteristically dressed in casual dark blue jeans and a beige shirt, rises from his chair at the dining room table, a newspaper unfolded in front of him.

“Dad,” Thor whispers, almost choking on the one syllable.

Frigga is too stunned and too furious to say anything. Even if she shouldn’t have been, she _was_ surprised—disappointed, angry—when he texted her to let her know where he went and asked her without further ado if she could keep an eye on the firm. She mentally revolted against his request at first but, then again, it still _is_ her job and doing her job provided her with another mental escape she ended up being grateful for. Not anymore though. After everything they’ve talked through with Dr. Fowley, all that remains is anger.

Especially when she watches him walk up to Thor and pull their son into an embrace her eldest doesn’t fight. Quite the contrary. He starts crying again, sobbing loudly into the crook of his father’s neck.

“I’m so glad you’re okay, son,” Odin mumbles as Thor’s arms twine around his father’s back, holding on as if Odin would disappear again if he let go. “And, by God, I do owe you an apology. I was a coward and a fool. I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you needed someone to focus on your needs.”

“ _I_ was there,” Frigga reminds him, not quite able—and not actually trying to—keep the bitterness out of her tone.

“Oh, really?” He presses Thor close. “Because when you walked in here, you guys seemed very much focused on Loki.”

“This is so _not_ how we’re going to start a conversation, Odin Borson!” Frigga explodes as she raises a warning finger, almost jabbing it into her soon-to-be ex-husband’s face. “You weren’t here _at all_! You thought—”

“Mom, please,” begs Thor as he pulls free of his father’s embrace. “Can you just … not fight for once? Just tonight?”

Frigga exhales a trembling breath, trying her best to let it go; to tell herself that Thor didn’t _blame_ _her_ for starting a fight just now. He is confused and her eldest was always closer to Odin than he was to her and she knows, deep inside of her she _does_ , that Thor needed Odin these past weeks. That he’s relieved that Odin came back. That she should be glad her son finds comfort in his return.

“Of course.” She storms off towards the open-plan kitchen with its dented fridge, its scratched vinyl floor tiles and its cracked-and-taped window. She pours herself a glass of wine. A large glass.

“What is going on here?” Odin enquires, eying the damage but not commenting on it. “Where have you been?”

“Family therapy,” Frigga offers after a large gulp because Thor just shrugs and then wordlessly walks over to the couch, flopping himself into the cushions.

“Therapy?” Odin echoes as he comes closer, his pale eyes going wide. “What the hell do _you_ need therapy for?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I need help to fix my ‘savior complex’? Or to deal with my son’s disappearance? Or our son’s temper,” Frigga scoffs, deliberately rubbing his face into the narrative he forced upon her for the past months with her choice of pronouns, “which, by the way, spiraled out of control because he thought he’d lost both his brother _and_ his father!”

Odin has the good graces to look like a repentant dog. On the couch, their son grunts like the first clap of thunder on a sweltry summer night.

“Thor’s right though. I don’t want to fight,” Frigga presses out, taking another sip of wine. This is an outright lie. She _does_ want to fight—or she might have if Thor had gone to his room—but she has no energy left.

“I’m sorry,” says Odin.

“Sorry doesn’t even begin to cut it,” says Frigga. “It’s the barest minimum.”

They stare at each other for a moment, trying to wage war through eye contact alone, but then Odin steps into her personal space to take the wine glass out of her hands. He gently sets it on the counter and pulls her into a hug. He’s warm and his heart is beating steadily again. She can’t find it in herself to jerk away. She doesn’t love him anymore, she still despises his actions and she certainly won’t change her mind about the divorce— unless, of course, someone promised her they’d bring Loki back home safe sound if she stayed by Odin’s side—but even Frigga can only take so much. It doesn’t even matter that it’s Odin who’s hugging her. It could be anyone who’s not breaking down at this very moment and she’d take it.

God, how much she yearned to be comforted for the past weeks. Months, maybe.

“Why don’t you run yourself a bath and I’ll make dinner?” Odin suggests and Frigga can hardly believe her ears. She nods and exhales a trembling breath as she untangles herself. Maybe grief does make you insane.

“Yeah, how about ordering something instead?” comes from Thor. “Mom was gonna make us Bolognese and I was kinda looking forward to eat something, well, _edible_.”

“Don’t you worry, son,” Odin assures him. “I can handle that recipe.”

Frigga knows he can. It’s _his_ family’s recipe after all. In contrast to her own mother, her mother-in-law thrived in the kitchen and modified traditional recipes all the time.

And a hot bath sounds pretty damn amazing.

* * *

Dinner was awkward, to say the least.

His Dad dutifully asked about his recovery, about college, about what Coach Tyree said, about how physiotherapy is working out for him, and his Mom didn’t really say anything. In fact, she pretty much looked like she was about to fall asleep or flat-out faint face-down into her plate. They didn’t talk about Loki or the fact that Odin just fucked off. Thor doesn’t think it would have gone well if they had. Not in their current state. Frigga excused herself right after dinner and so did Thor, retreating to his room.

At least, the Bolognese _was_ edible. Tasty, even. Who knew his Dad can actually cook dinner for himself?

“Yeah?” Thor snaps when someone knocks at his door about an hour later, praying it’s neither one of his parents even if the chances of that are less than zero.

Odin comes in and softly closes the door behind him. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Thor echoes, not bothering to pause the football game he’s playing on his Xbox because it’s the least he can do to keep his head in the game now that he is banned from training physically.

“What happened to the kitchen?” asks Odin as soon as he seated himself on Thor’s desk chair, legs apart, elbows resting on this knees. 

“I blew a fuse,” Thor replies curtly, carefully keeping his gaze glued to the screen. His Dad is _right there_ but still someone might have erected an invisible wall between them and it’s terrifying because they’ve never been this far from close; not even after Odin had kicked him out of the house to jumpstart his own life. “You know what that’s like, don’t you?”

“I do, yes,” sighs Odin. “And believe it or not, you probably won’t, it’s why I left.”

Thor pauses the game and looks at his Dad then, truly looks at the man who he loved and admired so fiercely when he was a little boy, looks at him for the first time in quite a while, studying him the way he studied his mother. Odin’s face is a grimace, deep furrows lining his forehead. His eyes are tired, his lips pinched. He’s fidgeting even, which Thor never saw him do before, kneading his fingers.

“Seeing you in the hospital, hurt and helpless, with no way to help you,” says Odin, raising his voice as if he’s asking a question, “the sight, the knowledge that there is nothing I can do, infuriated me. I said things to your mother I shouldn’t even have thought and that I’ll possibly regret for the rest of my life. I didn’t trust myself around you until you were better. I was too angry with your brother.”

“It wasn’t Loki’s fault, you know,” Thor murmurs because he has too little mental energy left to decide whether his father’s words count as an apology. He does understand, of course. They’re alike in many ways and then again they’re not because Odin wouldn’t have burst into tears twice today. “He just tried to cope, Dad. The whole bratty asshole drama queen act? That was a cry for love. And we just let him keep screaming.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They grow up so fast T_T
> 
> Next chapter will go back to Loki and Hela POV x


	20. Barely an adult

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rehab and family therapy are such fun!! :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoiler alert: All three of Odin's kids have a lot of growing up to do and all three of them can be arrogant little shits but we knew that already. 
> 
> I've bracketed the more explicit stuff having to do with Thanos in ###'s at the beginning and the end of each passage, so that you can skip those parts if you're triggered or upset by such content. I know not everyone of my readers is willing to venture as deeply into the dark abyss of human nature as I *wink*
> 
> Also, the chapters end up getting longer and longer, lol. Not sure if anyone minds though.

Life has turned increasingly drab.

Hela is still in rehab or maybe she died because she hasn’t answered her phone in days. Maybe the phone died instead. It was an old model, after all.

Eventually, he stops trying because she obviously left him, just as everyone else ever has and ever will. Loki realizes that he no longer cares. Well, he _does_ but not really. His mind is a frayed fishing net these days; with knots unraveling everywhere. He drifts in and out of floaty land more and more frequently, which annoys Thanos to no end and, often, he dreams of that woman with her warm smile, her soft hands and her long, wavy hair that tickles his cheek when he buries his head in the crook of her neck. She’s like a mother, he thinks, or at least how a mother _should_ be. Not that he knows how a mother should be. The only thing he knows for sure is that a mother probably shouldn’t go berserk on you when you flush her drugs or serve you cheap gin for breakfast.

Sometimes, Loki feels as if Hela isn’t really his mother. He doesn’t have an emotional connection with her or anyone else, for that matter. He doesn’t remember his childhood, doesn’t remember growing up. He doesn’t remember Hela giving him a hug. Ever. Loki received more hugs from the woman in his dreams than he did from anyone else in this bleak and filthy world full of drugs, guns, porn and ruthless calculation he doesn’t belong to. It’s probably wishful thinking and nothing else but a tiny part buried deep inside himself under layers of hopeless crazy _knows_ that he belongs somewhere else. It just _does_.

There has to be more than this. There _was_ more than this, at some point in the past.

Sometimes, when he’s high—which isn’t often, sadly, because Thanos apparently is a pussy after all who doesn’t want to get in trouble with “El”—Loki can almost sense it, taste it even.

But then he comes down and back to drab life goes.

Back to business.

###

It took Loki a few, well, he has come to think of them as _sessions_ over the past weeks, to get to the bottom of how it all works and he has to admit that Thanos—who they actually call The Titan on the street—is actually pretty damn clever. He dispatches his lackeys who recruit hookers (both over and way under eighteen) straight from the street where they’d otherwise have to fuck strangers in some back alley, pays them more than double of what they’d earn out there in return for a safer and warmer environment ( _he’s a true savior_ , _ha!_ ) and then leans back. Waiting for word to get around. Waiting for people to come to him. In truth, those girls never earn anything because all the money goes straight back to Thanos when they end up buying drugs off of him. Sometimes, he even pays them in coke or pills. On top of that, he somehow—Loki doesn’t know how—reels in people like the candle wax guy who actually fucking pay Thanos so that they can do these things to Loki and to others too. But then again, they get something out of it, which is how Thanos justifies it, and so does Loki because he’s this sick, psychopathic, limp-dicked little disaster with a whole lot of screws loose in his sorry ass brain. Thanos gets the whole thing on camera and puts it on the internet, where rich, fucked-up horn dogs stumble upon gratis photos or previews—a few seconds of material like a trailer—but then have to unlock the whole flick with their credit card if they want to see more. Incredible as it sounds, they usually do. And if Thanos is lucky, they’ll pay for the same video again and again after the one week in which they could watch it for free after the initial payment expires.

It’s clever, no doubt. Disgusting but clever.

###

The only problem is that Loki never sees any cash because he’s just the filthy offspring of a filthy coke addict ex-hooker, who, as Nebula tells him one night when she’s a little tipsy, “contributed to the business” by putting Thanos in contact with some of her underage clients. Underage clients who, _by the way_ , only came to her because word got around on the street that she tattooed without checking IDs, merrily committing a criminal offense every time she put a needle into a minor’s skin. Which, Loki realizes then, is probably the real reason why anyone would set foot in that dump even though he has to admit that she is a very talented artist too. If she’s not totally lit, that is.

Anyway, and how else could it be, Thanos paid Hela with drugs too, although, according to Gamora, he _was_ in love with her once. According to Midnight’s boyfriend Glaive, which, _come on_ , has to be the best street name to date, the big guy is _still_ in love with her but the girls all tell him that Glaive’s insight isn’t highly valued.

Loki couldn’t care less even though he does find them funny, all of them except Thanos, of course, because they’re so convinced that they’re all in this together like one big happy Mafia family— _cling_ _together_ , _swing together_ , _blah_ , _blah_ , _blah_ —when in reality, none of them means anything to The Titan. He’d replace them without blinking an eye, and certainly without shedding a tear over them, yet here they all are, thinking they’re somehow special or important.

Well, maybe Gamora is, which makes Loki wonder how she joined his ranks but that information seems to be private. Intimate. Hard to come by. But the rest of them are just henchmen with oversized egos.

Their entitled behavior is laughable. Pathetic.

Loki feels sorry for them when he isn’t busy gloating over their collective idiocy.

It doesn’t escape Thanos’s attention that Loki views them that way because, well, nothing escapes his attention. He starts to look at him differently then, to treat him differently too, with a little more respect, despite his meltdowns.

It’s fascinating.

* * *

“What about you, Elena?” asks the group leader, his fake-sympathetic brown eyes fixed on her as soon as the young man next to her finished his tear-jerker of a life story, and Hela tries to fight the urge to leap from her awfully cliché plastic chair to beat him senseless with it. To beat all of them senseless with it, really. “Are you finally ready to let us in?”

She has attended this circus for over a week now, listening to tale after tale of how sorry the other inmates—coughs, _patients_ , coughs—are about doing whatever they did under the influence of God knows what. They’re a regretful little bunch, all tears and missed chances and hopes for a better future. It’s a complete and utter shit show. It’s sickening. It makes her retch.

“I don’t think so,” Hela grumbles because she has no time for this crap. Thanos buys a new phone every year round Christmas after destroying the old one. Maybe he’s paranoid, maybe it’s wise, she has no fucking clue and it doesn’t matter because said purchase apparently already happened this year. When she earned her phone privileges after five days of reluctant cooperation, the operator informed her that the bastard’s number was no longer in use.

 _Fuck him_.

Eight days down, forty-two to go. It will be fucking Christmas by the time she’s free again because forging out an escape plan has proven to be trickier than she thought and playing along isn’t gonna happen, no matter how hard she tries to fake it. She’s just not cut out for dabbling with emotions, mainly because flat-out furious is the only one she knows at this point.

She thinks about calling the cops for the millionth time but she’s too much of a fucking coward to face the consequences. She’ll be neck-deep in trouble if she blows the whistle of Thanos. She’ll be neck-deep in trouble with the law too. Maybe she could call the kid’s gorilla of a brother and tell him where the kid’s living right now. Thor’s buff enough to take Thanos on physically, she figures, but then, again, if he found out that she let anything happen to his baby bro he’d probably rough her up too and she already received enough blows to her face to last for several lifetimes.

“There’s power in sharing, you know,” another group member—a middle-aged African American woman—tells her. It’s the first time any of the other so-called addicts directly addresses her in group and Hela wonders if that means they’re not afraid of her anymore. That’d be a pity, really. “When I first came here a couple of months ago—”

“You thought you had nothing left,” Hela fills in the blanks, her tone dripping with contempt because she’s heard the same story over and over again. Different versions of the same tale. She couldn’t care less about the person who’s telling it. “You had nothing to live for. But then, miraculously, your beautiful, dark eyes were opened and you could see the beauty of life again. You found hope. You realized that there was more to life than chasing the next fix.”

“Exactly,” says the woman, blissfully—idiotically—oblivious of her sarcasm.

“It’s understandable if you haven’t arrived at that point yet,” says the group leader. “But that’s what you’re here to figure—”

“Figure out, yes, I know,” Hela snaps, crossing her arms.

There is a silence after that. Verbal silence. People are still shifting on their chairs, fiddling with the cuffs of their shirts, murmuring quietly. The scene so fucking nuthouse incarnate that Hela yearns for teleportation powers.

“You act like you don’t even _want_ to get better,” a girl, who can’t be older than eighteen, accuses her. Her entire face is disfigured by ugly ass pimples. “Why?”

And suddenly, out of nowhere, another possibility to get her out of this place presents itself to her. “You _really_ have to ask me that? Are you even an addict if you believe getting sober will make your life better?” Hela snickers. “If you think you _want_ to get sober, you’ve been severely brainwashed!”

The group leader is on his feet instantly, raising his hand to silence her. “Maybe it was a mistake to think you’re ready.”

“You’re all just fucking lying to yourselves,” Hela continues over the group leader who tries to silence her. “I don’t believe you! I don’t fucking believe any of you! Nobody gets clean because they _want_ to! People get clean because they _have_ to! If there were no consequences whatsoever, none of you would _ever_ stop using!”

The room is all panicked gasps, shocked faces and suppressed sobs now.

“Elena!”

“Don’t you fucking bullshit me,” Hela screams at them as the security guy drags her out of the room. “None of you would _ever_ fucking stop! It’s bullshit! Everything you said so far is one huge truckload of fucking bullshit!”

The group leader comes after her, slamming the door shut behind him. Hela glances up at him, flashing him a feral grin.

He just stares at her, his mouth hanging open. “What the hell was that?”

“Well.” She bares her teeth as she jerks free. “You wanted me to let you in, didn’t you? I merely obliged.”

* * *

November handed over the reins to December weeks ago.

Shortly before Christmas comes that one time once a decade when Vegas is actually disappearing beneath a thick blanket of snow. It’s painfully ironic that Loki is no longer here to see it because it only snowed on Christmas Eve once when he was four and his little brother was sorely, heartbreakingly disappointed every year after that when all they got was smudgy gray clouds and a little rain for the holidays. Their house is alight with decorations too—a majestic tree with gold and silver ornaments almost touching the living room ceiling, lots of tinsel and fake snow, evergreens, poinsettias, candles, holiday lights—because Frigga is still keeping up appearances. It looks peaceful enough, Thor has to admit, and it calms him a little each time he enters the house, even if it still stings that he’ll have to celebrate his first Christmas without Loki.

Overall, Thor is getting a little calmer as the year draws to a close because he’s beginning to accept his brother’s death and beginning to accept that it wasn’t his fault. That sometimes people just get sick and, no matter how hard you try, there’s nothing you can do to fix them because some things in the human brain just can’t be fixed. It’s a hard lesson, disillusioning and depressing, and it makes him wonder if that’s what adulthood is like and if so, whether adulthood is always gonna suck this fucking much, but he’s trying to _accept_ it.

It’s hard though because he knows that Frigga has hope still. He tried to take Dr. Fowley’s advice to heart and not judge her for it; if only under the condition that his Mom would stop condemning him for eating a little too much these days because, hell, he’s bored as fuck and it’ll all turn into muscle as soon as he’s able to hit the gym again anyway. That isn’t entirely true but the truth, that the food soothes him and that he can’t stop being _so awfully hungry_ even though he’s never felt this soft and weak and fat in his entire life, is too embarrassing to admit to anyone.

He won’t be allowed back on the football field until next season either because the risk of another serious injury is far too high in this sport. _No kidding_. He talked about it with Coach Tyree and Scout Bolton, who finally admitted that he had an eye on him, which stings a whole fucking lot, and his coach is now letting him co-coach the Rebels. Bolton promised him that the next season is just around the corner and that he didn’t have anything to worry about. _If only_. It’s a start though, a tiny step back into normality; even if seeing his teammates practice constantly shoves his face into what he’s missing out on.

On the bright side, Dr. Fowley seems to be an okay-ish therapist, as far as Thor can tell with zero experience in determining what makes a really great or a really horrible one. He’s in therapy for ninety minutes every week. The first forty-five are devoted to work on his relationship with his mother, which he found ridiculous at first before he realized that they—he, mostly—left shit tons of stuff unsaid throughout the years where Loki was concerned. _Of course I didn’t **always** wanna have Loki around_, _Mom_. _What brother would_? _I had friends too_ , _you know_ , _and Loki was so small_. _Yes_ , _it was a lot to look after him_. _Okay_ , _maybe I was a little overwhelmed_. _Yes_ , _I always thought you love him more than me because he was so tiny_ , _a tiny_ , _little sponge soaking up all your love_. He even told her how Amora let Loki cry in his room or the living room play yard sometimes, waiting for him to cry himself into a frenzy. How he tried to pick him up and calm him down and his child body sometimes buckled under his baby brother’s weight.

“Why didn’t you tell us that, sweetie?” Frigga asked, aghast. He told her not to use nicknames in therapy but old habits die, well, he’s pretty sure some habits are immortal.

“Because I wasn’t supposed to pick him up,” Thor replied, which was true—he wanted to pick Loki up _all the time_ when he was a toddler because he was so cute and so tiny and both his parents had to keep watch to make sure he wasn’t trying—but, apparently, not what Frigga had been asking.

“Because she was a grown-up,” Thor conceded eventually, his words setting off an avalanche of childhood memories and even more tears. It’s flat-out ridiculous how much he’s been crying lately. “You told me that she was in charge and that we had to listen to her when you weren’t there.”

Frigga gulped.

“And she said Loki was too clingy and needed a time-out, which sounded like something Dad would say, so it seemed legit to me when I was a kid.” Thor shrugged. “Sorry.”

That threw her. Bad.

Then there was this one session Frigga told him that, while she always loved them the same, she did give the task of catering for Loki’s emotional needs a higher priority simply because Thor gave her no reason to worry about his. Because he was never sick as a child. Because he didn’t cry on his first day in kindergarten, didn’t cling to her leg, didn’t bury his face in the fabric of her pants. “You marched into the room and walked straight up to a group of three other boys like a fierce little warrior,” she said, a melancholic smile stealing onto her lips, touching her once tired eyes, lighting an actual spark in them. “You were always this strong, beautiful boy I didn’t have to worry about for hours on end. Which is why I didn’t. I worried about Loki. Then, now, always.”

She conceded to him, and to herself probably, that this was something she could have—maybe even should have—done better and would have done better if only she’d known he’d felt neglected. “But, honey, according to your logic, I can’t possibly win,” she concluded. “As far as your needs are concerned, I cared too much about Loki, giving him _all of my_ attention, but if we’re talking about Loki, I didn’t pay _enough_ attention to realize he was being abused.”

That one—which the shrink called a double bind scenario—threw _him_ bad.

That and the one time Dr. Fowley asked him if it hadn’t been awkward to have one’s brother sleep in one’s bed as “a male teenager with male needs”.

This one threw them both—he still can’t tell whose cheeks flushed redder—and Thor refused to go back the week after that. He almost didn’t go back at all but then he had to admit to himself that therapy had been kinda helpful after all.

The second half of his weekly appointments is dedicated to practicing anger management skills and talk about himself, which almost always results in talking about his temper too. And Loki. He doesn’t exist without Loki, hasn’t existed without him since he was going on five, doesn’t remember life without Loki. He asked her if that’s a problem. She asked back if it’s a problem for him.

Yes, it is. Because existing without Loki is new and painful, and Frigga is still wallowing in the denial stage. Odin appears undecided. “If he has Hela’s genes,” said he, “your brother might just be indestructible, son.”

It’s weird to have his father back and Thor is quite sure he won’t ever forget how Odin wrapped him up in a hug—a real fatherly hug, not just a quick, masculine pat on the shoulder—and apologized for leaving him when he needed him the most. His Dad is still a stubborn workaholic but at least they talk now. Sometimes. They talked about their tempers the other day, about how his Dad grew up, about how it feels when their anger submerges them, blinding them to any reason or resolutions made in good faith. It was an odd conversation in every sense but it also filled him with relief.

Thor still hasn’t forgiven him, though. Not entirely. Not even close to entirely because, of course, Odin still refuses to accompany them to see Dr. Fowley. He remains insistent that therapy is for the mentally disturbed and that they can very well talk this out by themselves. And he and Frigga are doing a fucking _awful_ of talking, that’s for sure, mainly about how and where they’re going to live. Neither of them seems to have the heart yet to move out of the house, let alone put it on the market. Thor doesn’t know if that means that they’re gonna get back together. It doesn’t sound like it—they’re probably both waiting for some kind of confirmation whether or not Loki is actually coming back—and, apart from that, maybe they shouldn’t because Frigga would be better off on her own but, then again, they’re his parents and everyone is selfish sometimes.

That’s okay though, according to the shrink.

It’s also okay to have a temper, apparently, because socialization and genetics have a huge impact on human development and “inheriting” his Dad’s temper was, on some level, natural. “You are only twenty years old, barely an adult,” Dr. Fowley said to him, making him bristle. “Nobody can blame you for developing a temper after growing up in a household, in which your father had one and both your father and grandfather idealized violent masculinity. However, the first thing you said when you came in here was that you want to work on it, which means _you_ recognize your anger as something destructive that impairs your relationships with other people and you’ve come here to rise above it. You took a first step to get help, which is nothing but admirable.”

 _Admirable_ , _huh_.

His mother finally started treating him like an actual grown-up again after all the progress he made and not like some premature teenage boy who raids her fridge at night.

At long last, Thor is finally allowed to run and exercise again, which feels insanely good, especially with the cold air biting into his face and stinging his eyes. Holy heck, he needed that even more than he thought. He’s in horrible shape and finally being able to push his fat, lazy ass to the limit gave him a colossal boost. Okay, technically he isn’t _fat_ -fat but it drives him nuts that, even though he lost weight, muscle weight, he still looks fatter. Frigga says he’s still got the body of an athlete but then again, parents always tell their children that they’re beautiful even if they look like lab experiments, and he _feels_ soft and kinda flabby, more like a pillow and no longer like a rock.

Dr. Fowley tells him that his perception is a little distorted because he’s so hard on himself.

Maybe he’ll feel better if he tries picking up girls again now that there’s no longer a jealous baby brother in the picture to muck things up for him, Thor speculates, feeling outright horrible for a moment. A very long moment. He texts Tony and Steve anyway, asking if they’re in town and in the mood to hit The Strip because Steve über-correct soldier Rogers is finally twenty-one now and no longer has the excuse of not wanting to use the fake ID Tony printed them when they were sixteen. And Thor is gonna be twenty-one in April too, so technically, it’s no longer really cheating. And if he doesn’t drink, he'll be fine.

* * *

 _Seventy-one-zero-fifty-one_.

Robin cracked the code a while ago. He knows he could leave but every time he tries to walk through the door to search for the more-than-this he sees in his dreams, something paralyzes him, holding him back, telling him that it’s useless. That he doesn’t belong wherever he thinks he might belong. That no one else wants him. It sounds suspiciously like Nikias even though Robin hasn’t spoken to that pest in what feels like an eternity.

Every time he thinks of bolting, he ends up staying because he has no money and he saw firsthand where people end up when they don’t have any money.

And he’s kinda curious, too, how far he could rise in the Titan’s esteem.

###

On top of that, he never had to engage in blowjobs or everything else vaguely sexual again after the fateful night in which “the girls messed up”. Okay, actually that isn’t true because for the customers inflicting pain upon him is apparently a highly sexual affair and sometimes they ask if they can shoot their jizz all over his back or belly when they’re done and he’s still strapped to the bed but that’s okay.

The pills make it bearable—he snatched a bag from Nebula the other day, which has kept him just _the right kind of numb_ for the past four days—and Hela can’t stay in rehab forever. Robin can hang in a little longer, he’s sure of it.

He’s sure of it until he walks into the house later that night and spots Midnight strutting in with a girl who can’t be more than seven years old and who’s looking at him with huge, terrified, help-seeking brown eyes when he passes her in the hallway.

Robin doesn’t know how much longer he can hang in after that, pills or not.

###

* * *

In the end, Thor does drink that same night.

A lot.

They all do because one simply can’t go out with Tony fucking Stark and not drink an awful lot. These are the rules and Thor didn’t make them. Plus, it’s been a shitty year for everyone, apparently. Steve, who just returned on paid leave for the holidays because he climbed the military ladder ridiculously fast, lost a comrade in Afghanistan he was close to, holding him as he bled out in his arms. Tony was disinherited by Howard way back in March, which he hasn’t told anyone until then, and Thor, well, his fall semester has been just perfectly splendid so far.

They end up hilariously shit-faced, even Steve. In Thor’s case, that usually leads to sex because his looks draw girls to him like a flame draws moths and he enjoys the attention far more than he should. Plus, he really, really needs to blow off some more steam and he really, really, _really_ needs to prove to himself that he’s still irresistible. The tourist he hooks up with tells him she’s from Norway, her breath hot against his mouth as he presses her against the wall of the casino bathroom, and what are the chances? Her accent is very cute . He wins five hundred in cash working one of the slot machines and gives it to a homeless guy lurking outside the MGM. “You look like you’ve had it rough, buddy,” he tells him and Tony and Steve snort a laugh.

Thor doesn’t get it.

Not anymore.

He’s fucking loaded.

Which is bad because when some guy storms after them on the sidewalk and shoves him away because Thor allegedly flirted with his girl, he shoves back. Getting into a fight is not the same thing as having a fucking temper after all. Sometimes you gotta fight when you’re a man, right? Steve manages to break them up before Thor can break his nose.

By the time Tony’s driver pulls up in front of his parents’ home, Thor has a busted lip and is this close to retching. Drunken car rides are the work of the fucking devil. “I shwear ifyou don’t wait till you’re inshide,” Tony slurs, trying to be threatening, and he pulls himself together because Tony really, really loves his cars. The blood on the leather cushion is bad enough already.

Thor fumbles with his key but his vision is too blurry and his fingers are too slick with blood and too cold and then the keyring slips out of his hands, landing somewhere in the flowerbed. When he bends down to search for it, he loses balance, tumbles over his own shoes and lands on all fours, palms in the frozen dirt. Eventually, he swallows his pride, uses the door handle to pull himself up and rings the bell.

It’s probably four a.m. in the goddamn morning by now but Frigga flies down the stairs at the speed of lightning anyway.

“Shshorry to wake you, Mom,” Thor manages before he has to puke. Right onto her bare feet.

So much for being an actual grown-up.


	21. The Right Thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hela cleans up with her past. And knowing Hela, she doesn't do things by halves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Which is to say, brace yourselves.
> 
> This fic is tagged rape/non-con and it's mainly because of this chapter. Beware. It's gonna be graphic. Watch out for those little bastards ### if you don't want to accidentally lay your eyes on any of it.
> 
> tw blood

Frigga and Thor have put a lot of effort into therapy these past weeks. They’ve spoken openly to one another for the first time since her eldest grew into a teenager. She’s been trying to give Thor’s needs and emotions more room in her mind but, after basking in the glow of her love for a few days, he soon grew tired of her attention, insisting that he isn’t some delicate, fragile little snowflake that needs to be cuddled at all times. “It’s in the past, Mom,” he told her, voice firm, chin out. “We talked about it, it’s cool. I know you love me, so don’t worry. Turns out you were right too. I’m _not_ like Loki. I’m not worried that, one day, you’ll just stop loving me out of nowhere. I don’t need your constant reassurance. It’s kinda freaking me out, actually. I’m gonna be fine and you should really save your energy for, you know, more important things.”

 _For coming to terms with Loki’s death_ , is what he did not say.

He merely kissed her forehead, smiled and moved on with his day, and she wanted to hug and kiss and cuddle him until he’d squeal in mock-annoyance, shrieking with thinly veiled delight.

Sometimes, Frigga finds herself wondering, as she often did when Thor was growing from boy into man, how she and Odin could have created such a marvelous being. It’s beyond her, really, how their gene mingling brought such a strong, gorgeous son with such blue eyes and such a deep, soothing voice into existence. Odin was handsome when he was a young man, sure, with thick hair and pale blue eyes and strong facial features and a dreamy expression on his face, but Thor is a young god in comparison. He wouldn’t be out of place in a mural gracing the walls of a temple.

As far as Frigga can tell, Thor really is doing better. He put two little rocks he and Loki once brought home from Norway into the bed of bushes and tropical plants surrounding the stem of Loki’s favorite palm tree in the back of their yard one day and sat quietly for a while. She knows he said his farewell then and her heart broke into a million pieces watching him grieve. She didn’t find within her the courage to ask him about it—she knows he made his peace with Loki’s death the same way she just _knows_ deep inside of her that her little boy is alive and breathing and nothing good can come from trying to convince each other—but she noticed some changes after that. She noticed that he’s coming back to life again. He smiles more and isn’t so frighteningly tense all the time. He’s a fighter, always has been, always will be. He’s fierce and beautiful and so much more intelligent than she realized, so much more emotionally mature in a lot of ways than she previously suspected. He’s calmer and less on edge and he’s been very cooperative in anger management therapy. He’s making so much progress, moving forward into a healthier mind space. Dr. Fowley praised him, more than once.

Which is why, when the doorbell rings at 03:48 in the morning, she doesn’t think of him at all.

Which is why, when she opens the door and lays eyes on him—stumbling drunk with dirty hands and a bleeding lip—instead of Loki or the police officer she’s been expecting, everything they discussed with Dr. Fowley goes straight out of the window. Before she can say anything though, he slurs an apology and then vomits onto her bare feet and she has to draw on her last mental resources to prevent herself from yelling at him. Her first thought, and, yes, may she be executed for it, is: _How could you do this to me_? _How could you get my hopes up_?

“Where have you been?” Frigga asks through clenched teeth even though that’s a stupid question because if he shows up this drunk, there’s only one possibility really. She talked to Maria Stark several times over the past weeks and knows that the other woman is beyond worried about her son’s rapidly growing drinking problem.

“Out,” Thor mumbles before he wipes the vomit away with his dirt-streaked hands.

“And you got into a fight.” It’s not a question.

“Mom,” he begs and then makes it all of two steps into the house before he slides down a wall and lands on his on his buttocks with a heavy thud. “Pleashe.”

Frigga lets it go. “Where are your keys? Did you lose them?”

“No, I … shomewhere in the flowersh,” Thor replies.

Frigga grabs a flashlight and illuminates the soil. Her son’s keys are right there, in plain sight, lying in front of his grandmother’s rosebushes. Frigga sighs and bends down to grab them before she closes the door behind her. Thor is looking miserable and she does her very best to remind herself that he’s just twenty years old. He’s still a college kid and there’s no way he’ll stop “enjoying” all these foolish, imprudent shenanigans college kids maneuver themselves into until he fully grows up. It’s a phase adolescents go through, after all. It’s not like he’s been drinking in secret in his room during daytime … And he’s been through so much … Maybe he really needed a guys’ night out even if he’ll so regret it in the morning.

“Great night, huh?” Frigga asks, softening up a little. He forms a sloppy circle with his thumb and index finger but his eyes are already closing. “Can you get up?”

“Notsshure.”

He can’t.

When Frigga goes upstairs to wake Odin who’s still sleeping in the master bedroom alone, telling him that she needs help with his son, his eyes snap wide open. “Did Loki come home?”

“Not yet but Thor is momentarily indisposed and if you don’t help him up the stairs, he’ll probably sleep it off on the hallway floor tiles,” Frigga replies and, despite everything, she can’t help but smile to herself. The next time the doorbell rings, it will be Loki.

She knows it.

She just _knows_.

* * *

In the end, Hela’s genius master plan to get herself thrown out of rehab by sabotaging other people’s recovery didn’t work out. Neither did her subsequent escape attempt, which could have gotten her sorry, rebellious ass arrested if security hadn’t stopped her in time, adding a court order violation to her already mile-long criminal record. Yep, in case anyone was having doubts, her life still sucks. Therapy didn’t fix shit because, surprise, it’s all a bunch of crap. Okay, the chemo drugs are starting to take effect, _yes_ , and it’s also kinda pleasant to wake up without sprinting straight towards the toilet bowl with a sore throat, a sour taste on her tongue and a jackhammer in her head every single goddamn morning, _true_. She also drew an entire catalogue with new tattoo motives, “being productive” and “thinking ahead” and shit because she was very sure she’d set herself on fire if she didn’t focus on something, _yes_ , _true_ , _yes_. But, apart from that, her body is still a wreck and sobriety is still lame and dull, no matter how many times those wannabe saviors gush over second chances and new beginnings. If not for the kid, she’d probably head straight to the next pharmacy to stock up on Oxy or Vicodin when the fifty days are finally over on the day before Christmas Eve.

She doesn’t.

She catches a cab ride to the detox center where she’s last seen her car even though she’s relatively sure it’s been shipped off to an impound lot by now and she isn’t wrong. It’s good fucking riddance. That thing was falling apart anyway, held together by duct tape and wishful thinking alone, and she won’t pay one cent to get that piece of junk back. No, there has to be a credit card in her apartment she hasn’t maxed out yet to get a rental.

She hops back into the cab and asks the driver to drop her off at her apartment. The vomit in the bathroom is still there because, _surprise_ , no one cleaned up after her, but, after all this time, it’s dry and crusty and can probably be scraped off the floor. The shards of the broken gin bottle are still there too and the smell of alcohol has sept into the floorboards, making the place smell like a whole ass distillery. It makes her mouth water.

Wasn’t there another bottle in the fridge?

The very thought alone makes Hela’s nerves tingle. She licks her lips and balls her fingers into fists, then shakes them out again. And again. And again.

She doesn’t look, not at first.

Sobriety sucks giant hairy, sweaty balls.

She takes a quick shower and, toweling off her head, she walks into her studio. There’s an envelope on her desk, a dark blue envelope with— _holy fucking shit_ , _wait for it_ —two-thousand fucking dollars in cash in it.

How much coke she could buy with this, is her first thought.

“Just think about it,” Thanos wrote onto the back and only then does she remember how he gushed about how the kid could earn her so much money with his slender built and his delicate, androgynous features. “Your son looks like an angel,” the fucking pervert said, more than once. “Everyone wants to touch an angel.”

She feels sick, depressed, disgusted. With herself, mostly.

Hela struggles into black pants, a green blouse and a black coat, takes the money and heads out again. Almost. First, she has to make sure there isn’t any gin in the fridge. Or maybe she has to make sure that there is.

Well, there is.

The second bottle is still there and she’s thirsty. Very. She’s also very on edge and booze isn’t really the problem, is it? She’s been in rehab for drug abuse, not because she’s an alcoholic or something. She pours herself a generous drink and savors each sip. It fills her with warmth and the second one gives her a pleasant buzz already. That, right there, is _the only thing_ that doesn’t suck about rehab.

Ready to face the world, she heads out and walks over to the car rental two blocks from her apartment, carrying George under her arm.

* * *

When she rings the doorbell of Thanos’s Hollywood apartment about an hour later, her heart is hammering in her chest, flushing her cheeks hot. She doesn’t even know if he’ll be there but, then again, it’s early afternoon. Not exactly the right time to do business. “Who is this?” he asks in his deep, booming voice.

“It’s me.” Hela gulps. “El.”

He sounds surprised but buzzes her in anyway.

“Hey,” Thanos murmurs, trying to pull her into a hug as soon as she steps into the apartment. “How have you been? Are you better know?” His gaze lands on the stuffed elephant. “What the hell is _this_?”

“Don’t give me that crap,” Hela spits, shoving him away as soon as she spots the kid sitting on the couch, his gaze vacant, vibrant green eyes dulled by _something_ , not even reacting to her presence or the TV screen he’s looking at. She dumps her purse on the counter without thinking twice about it. “You fucking bastard!”

“What?” Thanos asks, doing his best to look innocent.

“You sentenced me to rehab, didn’t you? To get me out of the fucking way?”

“Why would I do _that_?”

“Oh, I don’t know! To do whatever you want with him?” Hela spits, drawing himself to her full height to at least pretend they’re somewhat on eye-level, which is, of course, impossible considering his height. “Like hooking him on drugs, for example? He’s fucking plastered, you asshole!”

“Ah-ah,” Thanos chides her, reaching for her flying arms, grabbing her by the wrists. “He was desperately worried for you. I just gave him a little something to take the edge off.”

She tries not to scream. She fails.

###

“You took him to the house again, didn’t you?” Hela’s voice cracks. She reframed what he’s doing as ‘taking kids to the house’ in her mind for the longest fucking time because, well, denial. Denial is a wonderful thing, isn’t it, and _so damn necessary_ to keep you functionial if you’re a fucked-up criminal trying to finance your sorry ass drug addiction. But those other kids were just anonymous kids. This is her child and if Thanos took her child to the house, it means that he fucking shot child porn with him, either hurting him or raping him or forcing him to fuck other, smaller kids.

###

Thanos cups her chin, his filthy fingers squeezing her face. “Come on, baby. You told me not to, so I didn’t. I respect your wishes.”

“You’re lying,” Hela gasps as she jerks away and, suddenly, the bud of the protective instinct that has been growing inside of her for a while now blossoms into a flower. A rose. With awfully sharp thorns. She walks over to the kid, her intestines churning as she flops down beside him, handing the elephant over to him. “Here, I brought George.”

At first, he’s not moving at all but then his fingers feel for the fabric and he blinks in slow-motion.

“You alright?” Hela asks, the words almost getting stuck in her throat because she can see that he’s not. He’s wearing a scarf but it’s not quite covering the necklace of bruises. He nods vaguely, eyes half-closed. He’s all the way up in heaven and, _holy fuck_ , she’s actually jealous. She’s actually fucking jealous! “Did he take you to the house?” Hela tries again.

The kids shakes his head but she knows he’s lying too. She lived on the streets. She knows when she’s being bullshitted. “Please, tell me. You don’t have to lie.”

“Relax, baby,” murmurs Thanos as he sits down, looping his huge arm around the kid, pulling him into a disgusting side hug. “Do you really think I’d touch your kid without your permission after you told me no?”

“Yes,” Hela says and nothing was ever so clear to her. She put up with his shit for almost six years because all she cared about for two decades was getting high and no matter how violent he was or what he did to those kids, he always provided her with just enough coke to block out what a horrible, disgusting person he is. What a horrible, disgusting person she was to ask some of her teenage clients who she knew were his type if they wanted to earn some money on the side because if she supplied him with fresh meat, he’d throw in some crack. _Fuck_. That’s all that mattered for two thirds of her life. She turned a blind eye to everything for the next high, the next jag, even to her own misdeeds, because she hasn’t been be able to hold down a job for longer than two months in her entire life and doing these things, enduring a life with Thanos, was _still_ better than doing tricks on the streets again or, even worse, living a sober life. Because she never cared about anyone or anything like she cared about the next fix.

Until now.

Okay, she still cares about the next fix, she cares a whole fucking lot about all the coke she could buy with the pervert’s smug thanks-for-pimping-your-kid-out-to-me-bitch pay, which is exactly the point, now there’s the kid, _her_ kid, her fucking son, sitting on the couch, strung-out of his fucking mind, his cerebral matter scattered all over the Walk of Fame.

And he’s only sixteen.

 _Jesus fucking Christ_.

 _How could she_?

“Yes,” hisses Hela. “Actually, I do.”

“Well, you’re wrong.” Thanos glares at her but there’s a flicker in his eyes, a flicker of self-satisfaction which she hates with every fiber of her being.

That fucker isn’t worth a fight though. She needs every ounce of what little energy she has left. “Come on, kiddo,” says Hela, her voice hoarse as she takes her son’s hand, trying to pull him up. “Pack up your things. We’re gonna go back to my place.”

“He’s not gonna come home with you,” Thanos informs her briskly, his tone tolerating no dissent. “He wants to stay with me and, honestly, who can blame him?”

“Yes, he is,” Hela spits, glaring back. Thanos suddenly looks a lot bigger and her purse is a little too out of reach. Why did she put it on the counter for fuck’s sake? Will she ever grow brains? “And I want you to give me your key because you’re not gonna come to the apartment anymore.” The apartment she can barely afford with her tattooing now that she has the rehab bill to pay on top of everything else but that doesn’t matter right now. She’ll think of something. She always did.

Thanos chuckles condescendingly. “Come on, babe. You don’t mean that, do you?” He tries to touch her again but she slaps his hands away.

“Yes, I do. It’s over. I don’t want to see you again.” Hela takes a deep breath, trying to steady her voice. “ _Ever_. Now, come on, kiddo.”

The kid doesn’t make a move.

“After all I’ve done for you?” Thanos yells before he shoves her away because, _quelle surprise_ , he can’t deal with rejection any better than all the pathetic father figures stumbling in and out of Hela’s young life because her mommy couldn’t say no to the controlling type any more than Hela can. “You think you can just walk out on me? Just”—he snaps his fingers—“like that?”

“You’ve done nothing except making me more miserable!” Hela yells back. Well, maybe she can. Maybe she fucking will. Maybe she’ll rise from the goddamn ashes like a goddamn thrice-cursed fucking phoenix. “I told you to keep your filthy hands off of him but you touched him anyway and hooked him on drugs! You’re disgusting! He’s my _son_! How could you—”

Thanos snorts a laugh and the words he spits into her face then slice through her core like a knife, ripping open barely scabbed wounds. “You call _me_ disgusting after everything _you_ did? After selling these kids out to me to get your hands on more dope, always more and more dope? After selling _yourself_ out to me just like you sold yourself out to those sick ass perverts you kneeled for in some back alley to suck their dicks for more and more and more dope? You’re a fucking whore, in every sense of the word! Even if you aren’t fucking strangers for cash anymore, you’re still prostituting yourself for dope and that’s all you’ll ever do because you’re a pathetic little cunt.” He laughs again. “A piece of filth like you doesn’t get to call _me_ disgusting.”

For a second, Hela forgets herself, forgets that the kid is there and instinctively spits into his face, fueling his rage. He reacts instantly, his fist crushing into her face, and she shoves him away, well, tries to anyway, but he’s a real-life Hulk with muscles like solid fucking Teflon and all she achieves is that she makes him even angrier. Makes him reach for her throat and choke her until tears spring to her eyes and she has to beg him to let her go, which he does by throwing her onto the floor.

“Go to the bathroom,” Hela screams at the kid because she knows what’s coming. Hell, she knows _exactly_ what’s coming.

The kid startles at the urgency in her tone and leaps to his feet, darting off the couch like an arrow and stumbling in the direction of the bathroom, fucking George clutched to his chest.

###

Thanos has already opened his belt when she looks at him again and her stomach gives a lurch. She’s been there so many times and, still, it always feels like a part of her is gonna die. That she even has parts left that can die is nothing short of a miracle. And she’s clean now, _holy freaking hell_ , and his features have never been so clear in front of her eyes. She can see every pore, every creak in his skin. She bites her lip so hard she tastes blood as he lowers himself onto her because she doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction of pleading with him to stop. She’s too weak to stop him physically and he’ll fucking rape her like the pathetic cunt that she is but she won’t cry and she won’t whimper and she won’t beg. She’ll just take it because she let this monster into her life and it’s her own goddamn fault and if she cries, it’ll only make it that much more painful for the kid.

Thanos pins her down, one of his massive hands on top of her head, his fingernails digging into her scalp even through her wig, the other yanking down her pants. He’s rock-hard at this point, his giant purple dick throbbing, pulsating, vibrating, and he thrusts into her so violently that a sob of pain slips past Hela’s lips despite her best efforts. She closes her eyes because she can’t bear to see his face as he’s tearing her pussy apart.

She prays that he’ll at least be quick about it.

He is even though he doesn’t jerk off inside of her, which she finds odd for two seconds but then she realizes why. He pulls out his cock, stands up and then he squirts, shooting the whole load into her face to show her exactly what a worthless piece of pathetic filth he thinks she is.

###

Hela wipes her mouth, coughing.

When he’s done, he zips his jeans closed, fixes his belt and heads for the bathroom where the kid— _Loki_ , _for fuck’s sake_ , _he has a name_!—is probably rocking back and forth on the floor or the edge of the tub, his breathing short and panicky because he heard them and knows exactly what happened. Just like she always knew exactly what happened when she sat in her own room while her own mother was being beaten and molested by some fucker far less dangerous than Thanos on the other side of a closed door. 

Hela gasps, still coughing, struggling to her feet despite the raw pain exploding in her sore pussy and basically everywhere else. She wobbles to the counter where she dropped her purse and shouts, “You leave him alone, you hear me?”

His hand is already at the handle but he turns around, a sharkish grin on his lips, a glint of malice flashing through his dark eyes. “Or what?”

“Or I’m gonna kill you,” Hela threatens, pulling out the gun she bought on the way just in case and pointing it straight at him. “I’m not kidding. I’ll kill you if you don’t let us leave!”

He snorts. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“I’ve done it before,” Hela says, trying to make her tone sound as threatening as she can even though she’s fucking shaking, which is bound to make for a pretty messy shot. “And I’ve done it for less.”

Thanos looks at the gun, then into her eyes, at the determination in them. “And what if I let you leave, uh? You’ll come running back to me when you relapse, which we both know is gonna happen sooner rather than later because we both know you’re a pathetic addict! What if you die? Who’s gonna take care of that kid then? I’ve been good to him, El.”

“You stuffed him full of pills. You would’ve raped me right under his eyes if I hadn’t told him to leave! You’re a sick fuck and I shouldn’t have let you breathe near him for one second!”

Thanos barks a laugh and his contempt is like the bass in a club, making the whole room vibrate. “Says the bitch who tried to choke him to death because he flushed away her painkillers? Who stuffed herself so full of dope that she fell asleep, never once bothering that the little asshole flirted with me and that I could have raped him a hundred times over right under _your_ eyes while you were sleeping it off? You’re the worst fucking hypo—”

Hela pulls the trigger when he takes another threatening step towards her. Well, her hands do. Automatically. She isn’t aware that she’s doing it, has done it. She just hears the shot and then she hears him scream and then she sees him sink to the floor, groaning, his hand clutching at his throat, blood spurting through his fingers, splattering the black floor tiles.

It was a pretty good shot after all and, after a few moments of frantic wheezing and spluttering, the apartment falls eerily silent. She drops the gun into the sink and wipes it clean, suddenly utterly calm. There is no fear anymore, no remorse, no nothing. It was quick, maybe a little too quick and too merciful but that can’t be helped now. Quick like ripping off a Band-Aid, followed by a short stabbing pain of shock and then nothing. It stops hurting almost immediately. The wound is already starting to scab. She’ll heal, he won’t. He won’t do anything, ever again. Not to the kid, not to other kids of other mothers out there who have no fucking clue that their sweet baby girls have been doing tricks for a beast like Thanos in the darkest hours of the night, not to her.

He won’t ever hurt her again. _Ever_. He won’t break her nose again, won’t rape her again, won’t squeeze her jaw in his giant hands and almost pulverize her facial bones ever again.

She is free. Well, her kidneys are still failing, she relapsed barely two hours after leaving the rehab center and she just committed second-degree murder but, still, she’s free.

Free of the menace that was Thanos.

When Hela opens the door to the bathroom, careful to block the sight as sheʼs closing it behind her, the kid looks at her with a face that suddenly looks so fucking young and so fucking innocent from where he’s sitting on the floor, George still in a death grip in his arms. He doesn’t say a word, his huge green eyes still vacant.

Hela drops down next to him and puts her hand on his arm. “I’m so sorry. About everything, I …” Her voice cracks as she rubs his arm. “You shouldn’t ever have witnessed this or gone through …What did he do to you, Loki?” She cups his chin, forcing him to look at her.

He just stares and, out of nowhere, Hela breaks out sobbing. She loops her arms around him and sweeps him into an awkward hug, shushing him, telling him that he’ll be safe now, pressing him close, her lips brushing against the crown of his head, and she is holding him and she’s kissing him, holding him and kissing him like she never held or kissed any other person before. “I am sorry,” she repeats, a million times probably, because there’s nothing else she can think of. “I should never have brought you here.”

“I wanna go back to my real mama,” he whispers and there’s so much pain in these words, so much despair, that her stomach gives another violent lurch.

“I know,” Hela whispers against his hair. “I know.” She lets go of him and softly wipes her tears away with the back of her hand. “I’m gonna take you back home, okay?”

The kid’s eyes widen, just a little. “You’re gonna take me back to my real mama?”

“Yes,” Hela promises and despite the pang in her chest, she knows that he is right. Frigga is his mother and will always be his mother because, even if she didn’t realize or didn’t want to realize that Loki was abused by his father and brother, Frigga fucking Fjörgyndottir wouldn’t have let him drink gin for breakfast or tattoo himself on her watch. She wouldn’t have let him live under the same roof with a man like Thanos for all this time if she’d known from first-hand experience what he was capable of. Okay maybe that’s not true because she’s been sharing a bed with Odin fucking Borson for over twenty years but still. At least, Frigga is a Mom. Hela isn’t. And that boy in her arms is hurting for a Mom. “I’m gonna take you back to your real mama in a sec.”

He stares at her as she wipes her face with a piece of toilet paper, sponging up the rest of that sonofabitch’s cum and stuffing it into an airplane plastic bag she finds in one of the drawers. “I need you to do me a favor though, okay?”

His lips are still quivering. “What favor?”

“You need to keep your eyes closed when we leave or else we’re gonna jinx a safe drive back, okay?” Since he’s acting like a child again, it’s worth a try. Angie pulled shit like this a million times when Hela was little. He looks skeptical but nods. “Alright, close your eyes and take my hand.”

She gently takes the hand that’s holding the elephant and softly pushes the stuffed animal into his face—“Hold it that way, okay?”—before she leads him out of the bathroom, out of the apartment and into the elevator.

When the door pliiings shut behind her and the kid breathes a soft sigh of relief, she catches herself smiling, actually fucking smiling to herself, because this is the first time she made a sacrifice for the sake of another living, breathing human being. And no matter what awaits her in Vegas, no matter what Frigga decides to pin on her, no matter what the cops try to frame her for, no matter whether or not they believe the self-defense narrative, she just made the first serious step towards adulthood at the ripe age of thirty-two.

And even if it scares the living shit out of her, she knows that it’s The Right Thing to do.

It’s the fucking Right Thing—yes, capitalized and glowing in bright red neon lights—to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise ...?! :)
> 
> I've made up my mind months ago that this was how it'd "end" and here we are. Hela has her doubts (and so have I) about how quick and merciful the whole thing went down but I'll let you draw your own conclusions and am curious to hear your thoughts.
> 
> That said, there are two more chapters in this fic before we were supposed to move on to the Interlude II and then Part III, yet *deep sigh* since my readers apparently lost interest in this verse (okay, maybe you haven't and I only receive fewer comments due to reasons that don't have anything whatsoever to do with my writing or this story and everything to do with how shitty life has been for all of us this past year), I don't know whether I can muster the mental energy to work on the whole recovery part. With Breaking Point, I felt more enthusiasm and it kept me going but with this one, not so much, so I guess I'm not really that motivated to put what's in my head on paper if I can't be sure people are actually enjoying it?
> 
> I'm not trying to be whiny or fishing for attention but doing this with a steadily growing lack of response has been hard on me. Writing takes up a lot of my time and if things go well, publishing fics is fun but right now it's not because I beat myself up and second-guess myself a lot, so yeah. I know lots of you don't comment for a variety of reasons, all of which I do understand and respect and I'm not trying to force anyone out of their comfort zone by being a needy little shit but this is kind of a two-way street, isn't it?
> 
> See you soon (hopefully) x


	22. The worst kind of torture

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Family reunion pt. III, yay!!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Third time's the charm, right? 
> 
> Yeah, no. This shit is gonna be painful *hands out tissue boxes at the entrance*

While Hela is fastening his little brother’s seatbelt with shaking hands in her dearly departed drug dealer’s apartment’s parking garage, Thor’s crusted eyelids flutter open and, as soon as he comes fully awake, he’s one-hundred-twenty percent positive that dying of a terminal illness would hurt less than … than _this_. His pounding head. The foul, acid, vomitty taste lingering in his parched mouth. His heart that is beating a little too fast, making him all hot and breathless. His eyeballs that are drier than the Mojave.

And yet, despite his discomfort, Thor realizes that he is smiling. He is actually fucking smiling. The hangover is a super nasty one, that’s for sure, but it still isn’t as nasty as some he survived in college; probably because he had tons of greasy food for dinner, building himself a solid foundation (getting more responsible after all, eh?), and puked some of the booze out. That and his Dad actually made him drink three _whole_ glasses of water before he finally let him go to sleep. He silently thanks Odin when he finally drags his ass out of bed shortly before two in the afternoon because he can’t hold the piss in anymore.

After a long shower, he is sure he’ll survive. And it was worth it, too. Thor did have an epic night. He and the guys laughed a lot, unearthed a ton of memories, reminiscing as if they went to Infinity High a whole ass decade ago, teased each other, kidding around just as they used to in the good old days before life had to turn so bleak and serious, filled with tragedy and adult stuff. And the girl, _dammit_. She was seething hot and if he remembered her name, he’d probably be scrolling through his phone to see if she gave him her number right now. Thor didn’t realize how much he’d been missing chasing after girls to make them moan and shriek in orgasmic bliss with his skilled hands, tongue and dick. And no questions asked, he still got it. Hammered or not, he has the stamina of a true Football God and the girl was duly impressed. 

_Val_.

Hah! There is the memory. He picks up his phone again and scrolls through his contact list and there she is. With a burning flame next to her name. _Feisty_. Thor texts her without thinking twice about it, asking her if she’s in the mood to hook up sober for dinner or something before she flies back. It’s as if a part of Thor has come back to life after last night, which is kinda ironic considering he felt so close to death when he woke up, and the hangover totally is an okay-ish price to pay for having been reminded of what his life was like—and could be like again—before he came home three months ago to find his baby brother unraveling at a dazzling speed.

If only he hadn’t embarrassed himself by puking onto his Mom’s bare feet.

That tiny little detail keeps Thor in his room until six, until he can no longer ignore his stomach’s demanding growl. Tony would probably be in awe all over again if he knew that Thor has actually been craving food ever since he stepped out of the shower.

“Risen from the dead?” Frigga asks him when he finally descends the stairs, a little smirk on her lips.

“Yeah,” Thor mumbles, shame flushing his neck, cheeks and ears, turning him into a lobster dropped into a boiling pot. “Look, I’m sorry for …” He harrumphs, trying to regain control over his voice. “About last night, this morning. Whatever.”

“Oh honey, I know you are,” says she, actually fucking gloating. “You look mortified. I never thought I’d see that expression on your face again. It reminds me of the day you broke your grandfather’s vase because you played football in the house after we told you not to and then hid in your room for hours trying to come up with a plausible explanation for your father.”

“Did I?” Thor asks. “Come up with something, I mean?”

“Did you ever?”

Thor grimaces, then chuckles. Nope, he _never_ did and they both know it. Loki was always the one who came up with the kind of creative excuses that had at least a slight chance of fooling their parents. “You aren’t mad?”

“I was,” Frigga concedes. “For a moment.” She pauses, looking pensive, worried even. _Oh no_. “Why did you … Did something happen?”

Thor slumps down on a chair next to her. “What do you mean?”

“You got into a fight,” Frigga tries.

“The other guy started it,” Thor defends himself. “I swear, Mom. I wasn’t looking for trouble. He just came up to me and … You can ask Stark and Rogers. It wasn’t my fault. I’m trying, okay?”

“I know you are.” She pauses again. The crease of worry hasn’t disappeared from her brow. _Yikes_. “But … why did you get so drunk, honey? What is bothering you?”

“Nothing, I just … went out to party. It’s what young people do, you know,” Thor replies, mentally scrambling to avoid another one of _those_ talks because ever since she told her that he was upset as a boy, she now thinks he has to be treated with kid gloves. Hell, she probably suspects he drank himself into a stupor because he was trying to numb himself like Loki did all the time even if it was really just for the fun of it. “I’m sure it’s what you did when you were my age hundreds of years ago.”

She smiles then, ruffles his hair even, and then announces she’ll make dinner for the two of them.

“Where’s Dad?” Thor asks, dreading the answer.

Frigga sighs deeply and then tells him that, _oh wonder_ , Odin took on his first high profile case as lead attorney since his heart attacks and retreated to a Mount Charleston cabin after hauling his son’s drunken ass into bed this morning to discuss the defense’s strategy. On December 23rd. Two. Days. Before. Christmas. Thor imagines him sitting at a table at this very moment, sipping scotch with his team of fellow workaholics who can’t be bothered about family, and his innards tie themselves into knots. Not that there’s much to celebrate this year but it stings anyway.

“He’ll be back on the 25th,” Frigga assures him when she sees the look on his face.

 _Yeah_ , _well_ , _let’s see about that_ , thinks Thor.

* * *

Hela has been spending the whole drive trying to concoct a narrative that Odin, Frigga and the cops might swallow and that wouldn’t result in a child abduction or child endangerment charge. She isn’t overly worried about the cops finding out that she shot Thanos—as far as everyone knows, she was in rehab and someone like him must have had other enemies besides angry ex-girlfriends-slash-assault-victims—but even if they did, she’d possess enough intel to walk out of there with a deal. She’s sure of that much at least. Besides, it’s far more likely that Midnight will either take the reins or rake up all the cash and get her goth ass on a plane to Hawaii to live happily ever after before the business crashes down and buries the other sorry ass losers under it. Hela’s non-existent money is on the first option. Proxima Midnight is definitely drug lord material. She’s lusting after power, she’s ruthless ### and she has no problem with either shooting or editing or watching rape porn involving actual fucking kids. Hell, she’s probably even enjoying it. She was the first one to bring an actual child she’d kidnapped from an actual grocery store parking lot (!!!!!) to the house to “spice things up”. Yes, Hela should have walked the fuck out of this shitfest the minute she noticed that Thanos got a hard-on telling her about the little ones. ###

She should have, _of course she fucking should have_ , but there was the coke. The finest coke on the West Coast, whiter than freshly fallen snow, finer than powdered sugar, unlaced and pure, five grams of heaven in a tiny, sealed plastic bag. How could anyone say ‘no’ to such pure bliss?

Hela couldn’t but still hopes against all hope that she can leave this part of her life behind once and for all and still kinda casually … If only there was a way to casually get high without descending into the dark, festering underbelly of social and human nature every single time. It’s natural, of course, because drugs are illegal and if you get hooked, you’re bound to end up meeting people who do illegal shit but, still, it just isn’t fair. But it’s the same old problem, isn’t it?

Which boils down to Hela fucking Davis being fucking poor. If she were rich, she could snort all the coke in the world like the goddamn Wolf of Wall Street without having to spread her legs or get involved with a monster like Thanos. If she were rich, she could buy herself a new kidney, maybe a bone marrow donor, and everything would be fine. People go on and on about how money doesn’t truly make people happy but she knows that this too is nothing but another fucking truckload of plain old bullshit. It’s something other poor people tell themselves to be able to endure their misery without spiraling into depression. The truth is, if she had Odin’s money, she wouldn’t have any fucking problems. Maybe she should kill him too, now that she’s on a roll. Kill him, smooth and quick, steal his fortune and ride out into the sunset with newly functioning organs.

Hela is kinda intrigued by the thought but, then again, Odin isn’t a monster. He’s a cold, agro bastard, that’s for sure, but roughing your kids up because they riled you up first (yes, the kid does that A LOT) pales in comparison to what Thanos did to innocent people every goddamn day. Nope, Odin doesn’t deserve a bullet through his throat. He deserves a nerve-shattering trial, public humiliation—“Vegas star attorney sentenced to eight years in prison,” she can practically hear the anchor exclaim in guilty excitement. “Odin Borson, who worked as a criminal defense attorney for many, many years was just found guilty of child abuse, child neglect and child endangerment!”—and, after that, a steep jail sentence.

Just like her.

She tries not to think about _that_.

The kid’s eyelids finally flutter open as they’re passing the US Army Reserve Center on the left after another stretch of seemingly endless desert, putting a welcome stop to her thoughts.

“Sleep well?” asks Hela and, just like that, they’ve come full circle.

Well, almost.

“Mh,” Loki hums, his eyes still glassy, pupils still huge. _Fuck_. She still doesn’t know how to explain away that she didn’t bring him home sooner. The rehab tale will probably stick—she’s got proof after all—but what about the month or so that came before that? Why didn’t she ever call? Why didn’t she let Frigga know that Loki was alright? Why the hell did she let him stay with Thanos? Which she didn’t, really, not to her knowledge but they don’t know that and why would they believe her? Maybe she can feign ignorance, which wouldn’t even involve an awful lot of feigning because she has no clue how Loki ended up with Thanos after she landed in the hospital on his birthday and—

 _Shit_. She almost killed him. Frigga may be a sophisticated, gratingly civilized woman but even she would probably succumb to primal instincts if she ever found out about _that_.

“Shouldn’t you be a little more excited?” Hela asks him warily but she has a feeling that he isn’t even listening to her. He’s still stoked—he was probably given one of Thanos’s special pills that used to keep her out of it for like twenty hours—and she’s still a little (A LOT) jealous. _Dammit_.

He shrugs again.

“Shit,” Hela blurts out. “Frigga is gonna kill me.” The last syllable comes out as a cough, a really violent cough. “Can you try to be a bit more cooperative?” She coughs again and her side almost explodes. “Look a bit more awake maybe?” Her voice doesn’t carry the way it should. What is _this_ crap now? Can her kidneys at least _try_ to slow down for a few more hours? “She doesn’t really need to know you’re loaded the second you step out of the car. Fuck, she’s gonna pin this on me anyway. She’s never gonna believe me. What the hell am I even doing? This is gonna—” Another cough, cutting her off mid-sentence. “Fuck.”

The metallic taste of blood hooks into her throat and she has to stop for water at the next truck stop. She gives the kid a bottle too, telling him to drink, and then empties her own in three large gulps, her raw nerves yearning for another drink.

The kid’s gaze remains vacant and he keeps staring out of the window, no recognition or emotion in his dull eyes as they drive into Vegas, which is even more colorful at this time of the year with all the Christmas lights and shit. Gosh, how much she fucking hates the way Christmas makes people pretend they suddenly care about each other, acting as if the world isn’t a shithole full of sick ass people for a month before slowly slipping back into asshole mode mid-January. It even fucking snowed, for fuck’s sake. It’s like driving into a postcard.

“Why are you so tense?” Loki finally asks. He isn’t slurring his words too badly but maybe, _just maybe_ , she should still wait to drop him off until he’s fully awake.

“Because your mama’s gonna wipe the fucking floor with me,” Hela snaps. He stares at her, eyebrows twisting into a frown. She glares back, wishing she could actually stare a hole into his forehead to watch his thoughts chase themselves through that screwed-up little genius brain of his with her own eyes. “You’re gonna tell her that you drove us to LA, yes? That you wanted to stay? That I didn’t kidnap you or anything?”

He shrugs.

He just fucking shrugs.

He doesn’t even stir either when she pulls up in front of Odin swanky suburban residence that she still hates too. She still hates a lot of shit, which proves the point that therapy doesn’t make things any fucking easier. “What the hell is wrong with you?” Hela sighs. “You _wanted_ to go back! Are you having one of your moments again?”

“I’m always having a moment,” Loki murmurs. Yeah, she needs to bring him back right now. If she doesn’t, she’ll lose her fucking mind because she still can’t handle all the crazy wafting off of him like poisonous fumes and she really isn’t keen on going into another psychotic break. Plus, she needs a drink. A hundred drinks, probably.

“You ready?”

He glances at her as if to ask for what. His lips open and close again. He doesn’t bother with words, just nods vaguely and Hela’s stomach takes a huge ass plunge. _What the hell is wrong with me?_ _I fucking killed a man_. _A fucking Titan who controlled half of Los bloody Angeles_. _A drug lord_. _A rapist_. _A child porn dealer_. _Why am I afraid of Odin’s goddamn wife_?

Hela gets out of the car, angry with herself for being such a wuss, her heart hammering inside her chest nonetheless. “Come on. Let’s get this over with.”

* * *

When they’re putting the plates into the dishwasher after dinner, Thor’s hangover is finally fizzing out. Or has fizzed out already. He hasn’t noticed how it slowly withered but, sure as heck, the headache is gone, he’s well-fed and sufficiently hydrated, and he feels fully alive again. Maybe he’ll even go for a walk, he thinks when the doorbell rings. The noise echoes through the house like a gunshot, shattering the companionable silence that has built up between him and his mother.

As soon as Thor sees the hopeful expression washing over Frigga’s face, it begins to dawn on him what exactly he put her through when he rang it last night just because he was too loaded to put his fucking key into the fucking lock. She sprints towards the door immediately and Thor can’t help but think that whoever it is, they won’t bring good news. Maybe they found Loki’s body or maybe … 

When Frigga yanks the door open, though, Loki is standing _right there_. He’s standing there in the flesh—fucking pale, skinny, bloodless flesh sure—but he’s _there_ and so is Hela, holding a giant stuffed elephant, a very convincing contrite expression plastered onto her face.

“Loki,” Frigga whispers, her hand going to her mouth.

He looks at her, unblinking, maybe even slightly panicked. He’s wearing girl clothes and a girly scarf, with no coat or jacket, and his pupils are fucking blown.

“Hey,” Hela mumbles, coughs out really, her gaze landing on his busted lip. Something flashes through her eyes, something he doesn’t like at all.

Before Thor can get anything besides a shocked gasp out of his mouth, Frigga sweeps her lost boy into her arms, sobbing loudly, unintelligible words sputtering out of her mouth as she cradles him close. Loki doesn’t react. He stiffens in her grasp, not hugging back, and Thor doesn’t know what it is he feels. All these hours of therapy forcing him to describe his emotions and he can’t even express …

Thor’s life _just_ started to feel _normal_ again and now it’s all gonna go straight back to fucking hell and ... there’s a tornado of emotions whirling through him right now and his stomach clenches in response to its intensity, pushing up Frigga’s beef casserole. Of course there’s relief when it registers that Loki is still alive despite everything but he’s also beyond terrified because Loki isn’t Loki right now but he also isn’t Nikias or anyone else Thor met before, _no_ , his brother is just numb and unresponsive, probably high, definitely high, and worn-out as fuck and still so motherfucking skinny, probably even skinnier than he was when Nikias exited through the door of Loki’s bedroom a couple of months ago, and then there’s rage too, that all too familiar flame burning hot in the pit of his stomach when he realizes that Hela never fucking bothered to call them even though Loki was apparently with her this whole time!!

“You fucking bitch,” Thor spits.

“Oh, you still have that anger thing going on, don’t you?” Hela spits back, tapping her own lip. “Nice bruise you got there.”

“How dare you! He’s fucking plastered,” Thor storms. “You fucking—”

“M-mom?” Loki stammers, struggling out of their mother’s embrace.

“Yes, honey?” Frigga asks but Loki isn’t looking at her. Nope, he’s looking at _Hela_ , a faint spark of panic flaring up in his lusterless eyes. “What are we doing here?”

For a moment or two (or maybe a hundred), the world slows to a stop and all Thor is aware of is the sound of his own heartbeat whooshing too loudly in his ears. What comes out of Frigga’s bloodless lips is a nothing more than unintelligible nonsense.

“Are you _kidding_ me?” Hela explodes, making Loki flinch. “You told me you wanted to go back to your ‘real mama’. You freaking _told_ me that not six hours ago. It’s why I drove us two-hundred-seventy miles through the fucking desert! And, voilà, here she is.” She gestures towards Frigga and Loki just stares, his empty eyes flitting from Hela to their mother and back to Hela. “You can drop the act now, alright?”

The house falls silent, eerily silent. Whatever Hela did or didn’t do, it doesn’t matter to Thor right now. What matters is that Loki or whoever inhabits Loki’s body right now is not recognizing them and that Frigga isn’t much help, really. Her wildest dreams came true but, then again, they didn’t, _they fucking didn’t_ , because the person who left the house wasn’t her baby boy and the person who just returned isn’t her baby boy either and she’s not taking it well. She kinda reminds Thor of a malfunctioning droid in dire need of reprogramming because someone ripped the cables keeping her functional straight out of her back. She’s all verbal puke and abrupt movements.

“What is your name?” Thor asks his brother softly because, with his mother all but incapacitated, he’s the one in charge. The only man in the house after his Dad fucked off _again_.

Loki’s eyes go wide. Hela’s eyes go wide too and her mouth gapes open. “What the fuck? Why do you even ask him—”

“Look,” cuts Thor, ignoring his half-step-whatever-sister, focusing entirely on Loki-who-isn’t-Loki right now. He’s reaching out to touch his brother’s arm but then thinks better of it. “We know about Leah and Nikias and the others. It’s okay if you don’t … Like, if you’re not Loki right now, that’s okay. You can …” His words trail off and Hela just gapes at him as Loki’s eyes go even wider and they look so fucking alike it’s giving Thor the creeps. “You can tell us.”

“Who the hell shat in y’all’s brains?” Hela exclaims. “I swear you’re all insane!”

“How do you,” whispers Loki, groping for words.

“I’m your brother,” Thor says, not exactly sure how to go about this because Loki’s disorder didn’t exactly come with a fucking manual. That would’ve been far too easy, wouldn’t it? Doesn’t matter. “Well, adoptive brother, but still,” he hurries to add. “It’s me, _Thor_. You grew up here. We grew up together, in this house.” He gestures towards Frigga as Hela did only moments before. “This is our Mom.”

Loki’s head begins to shake, his eyes huge and panicky. “That’s not … I don’t …”

“What is your name?” Thor asks again, as softly as he can.

“Robin,” his not-quite brother whispers at last.

“Robin?!” Hela echoes. “That’s the name on your fake ID, for fuck’s sake! It’s doesn’t … You’re not … Never mind. Come on, I’ll show you,” snaps Hela, ever the patient one. She reaches for Loki’s—Robin’s—wrist and drags him into the living room, towards their Mom’s photo wall, Thor and Frigga tagging along after them. “See? That’s you. This is your home.”

She spots Odin’s liquor cabinet then and immediately makes a dash at it, pouring herself a scotch, filling the glass up to the rim while Thor and Frigga can only gape at Robin, who is staring at the pictures of Loki’s kid self posing during family vacations and important scholastic hallmarks, his cheeks practically vibrating. 

“You recognize that face?” Hela asks as she joins him again.

Loki—Robin—takes the drink from her and brings the glass to his— _her?_ —lips, taking a large gulp. “Why are you doing this to me?”

“Doing what?” Hela practically screams. “You _told_ me—” Whatever she’s been meaning to say catches in her throat and she just stares back at her ‘son’ with a furious glare in her eyes before she snatches the glass from him and empties it as if the scotch was water and Thor’s stomach churns and Frigga breathes loudly into his ear. “Don’t act like I’m trying to prank you or something. You’re the one driving _me_ crazy! You tell me things and then, five hours later, they’re all forgotten. You drive us all the way to LA and then you claim you can’t drive! You tell me you want to get back to your mommy and now you act like you’ve never even seen your family before! For fuck’s sake, kiddo! What in the overflowing fuck? Why are you—”

Tears have begun to pool into Robin’s eyes and he lowers his head, burying it in his—her, their—hands.

“Oh, honey,” Frigga murmurs, her primal instincts finally kicking back in. She tries to pull her tormented little baby into her arms again and this time, he melts into her hug, whispering a soft, choked “mama” before he dissolves into tears and sobs.

“He has a mental illness, genius,” Thor snaps at Hela as Frigga ushers his brother towards the couch, being purposefully vague because Hela isn’t the kind of person who’d understand. Not in a million years. “He forgets things because he dissociates sometimes. It’s like having amnesia.”

“I see,” Hela replies, her eyes on Frigga who is lowering herself onto the cushions with her bawling son. He’s half on her lap, arms and legs clinging to her waist and neck, holding on for dear life, telling her he dreamt of her, his sentences butchered by gut-wrenching sobs. “He really is a fucking mess.”

“And the drugs you gave him probably made him worse,” Thor snarls at her. His temper overwhelms him out of nowhere, ambushing him really, and suddenly he’s all hot throbbing veins and zero self-control, fires of rage blazing up in his temples, the pit of his stomach, his fists.

“I-I didn’t give him drugs,” Hela stammers. “I wasn’t even _there_. I know you won’t believe me but I was sentenced to rehab by the courts and he was staying with—”

“You’re fucking drinking,” Thor growls. The breathing exercises he learned that are usually quite helpful don’t do shit this time and he can’t be bothered to give them a better try. He’s fuming in livid and he wants to fucking strangle her for taking his little brother away and making him so much worse! If only he could get away with it. If only he could—

“I was in rehab for dope, not booze,” Hela defends herself lamely.

“Who was he staying with?” comes from Frigga, who finally got fixed by an invisible mechanic breezing in and out of the room without Thor noticing, her hands cupping Loki’s head, her fingers softly running through the hair he’s grown out all the way down to his collarbone.

“My ex-boyfriend,” Hela says, with apparent difficulty.

“I’m sure he’s just as good with kids as you are, bitch,” Thor grumbles before he can stop himself from insulting her. And even if he could have, he probably wouldn’t have wanted to.

“Thor, be civil. Hela, tell us what happened,” Frigga demands. Her voice is still weak and brittle but she’s more composed now and Loki’s sobs aren’t that loud anymore and maybe he’s drifting off into sleep or unconsciousness and maybe he’ll be switching back to Loki or Leah when he does. Gosh, Thor hopes so, he really, really hopes so, because having his brother back but _not_ having him back Schrödinger style is the worst kind of torture. It hurts ten thousand times worse than having to watch his teammates play football. It hurts like a … In English class, he was once forced to read the line “the blood weeps from my heart” in some play and found it stupid and far too dramatic but that’s what he thinks of right now. Of his own heart, hurting inside his chest, crying big fat ugly bloody tears.

Hela helps herself to a refill before she sits down—thankfully not making herself comfortable, _nope_ , she’s on guard as she damn well should be, perching on the very edge of the couch, as far away from Frigga as physically possible—and takes another gulp, a deep breath, and another gulp before she starts speaking. Once she does, the words spew out of her mouth like there’s no tomorrow and Thor flops into his Dad’s armchair, not trusting himself to sit down any closer to her.

“That day we almost had dinner, after I left, I smoked a cig outside to calm down, tried to get sober enough to drive back, you know. He came out. Asked me if I still wanted his help and that he’d get his tissue tested if I got him out of here. I agreed. I was too strung-out to actually drive and he got behind the wheel and I was too fucked-up to realize how insane that … that whole thing was. He assured me he had a permit. Ambulances and cop cars passed us when we pulled out and I did have a weird feeling but, then, I fell asleep and only woke up hours later when we were already in Cali. He told me what he’d done, told me that he hated you.” She is searching for Thor’s gaze and the shame is burning white hot in his chest. “That you’d beaten him up and that Odin had been rough with him and that he’d just, well, defended himself. He asked me if he could stay. He didn’t … I swear, he didn’t want to go back. He told me he wanted to stay, so I let him, which was selfish but I didn’t kidnap him or anything. I mean, he’s my son, right?” She chuckles faintly. “I had kind of a right to—”

“No,” Thor cuts in. “He really is _not_. He’s my Mom’s son and he’s _my_ fucking brother. We are his family and you just took him away to use him to get better and you didn’t even fucking call us! Why didn’t you?”

Hela looks like she’s just bitten into a jalapeño. “I,” she begins but it comes out as a cough.

“Why didn’t you fucking call us and let us know that he was alive?” Thor roars, his anger almost physically blinding him. Scratch that. His vision is _actually_ fucking shimmering by now. “I thought he was dead! I blamed myself! I cried for him, mourned for him! I fucking mourned him, thinking I’d lost him forever and I couldn’t even _bury_ him and, all the while, he was with you and you couldn’t even pick up the fucking phone?”

He’s towering over her now, doesn’t even recall jumping to his feet, his balled fists itching to crash into her pale cheeks. Curiously enough, Frigga doesn’t reprimand him. She just looks at Hela, silently urging her to answer.

“He didn’t want me to,” Hela whispers at long last and then coughs again, her face screwing up in anguish.

 _That fucking bitch_.

“He’s a goddamn child!” Thor storms, words and spit flying out of his mouth. “He’s sick, for fuck’s sake! And you just thought it’d be okay to take him away from his family to live with your junkie ass? Are you fucking kidding me?”

Inside Frigga’s arms, Loki whimpers and she shushes him, her eyes searching for Thor’s, pleading with him. _Stop_. _You’re freaking him out_.

“He didn’t act like a child,” is all Hela has to say in her defense before she has to cough again and, this time, she coughs up blood that sprays onto the coffee table. She cups her mouth with both of her hands, eyes widening in shock, fear, horror, but the coughing doesn’t stop and more blood seeps out between her fingers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I still got it, don't I? Ha!


	23. Are we horrible people?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They have come a long way, all of them. Let's cut them some slack.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I'm posting this because I have zero self-control!!! Enjoy :)

Thor fetches Hela a box of tissues with maximum reluctance before he stomps away. He is so wound up he’s practically vibrating out of his body, Frigga can sense it, can sense her son’s anger wafting into the air like carbon monoxide, and this time, she doesn’t only understand its origin but feels some of it herself. That and an overwhelming confusion combined with utter helpless, utter unknowingness and inexperience, that makes it damn near impossible to wrap her head around what is happening around her right this minute.

She _knew_ Loki was going to return—and, after today, she’ll probably never doubt the existence of Christmas miracles ever again—but, still, she wasn’t prepared. She wasn’t prepared to see him so small and beaten and skinny and vulnerable and in _so much_ pain, so much agony, so much mental confusion, dulled and drugged, lifeless almost, the last spark extinguished from his once so fierce green eyes. She wasn’t prepared for the possibility that he wouldn’t even _recognize_ her. Wasn’t prepared for Hela’s brazen attitude, for her to strut into the house, helping herself to Odin’s scotch as if she’d been invited and justifying herself with the kind of paper-thin, pitiful defense that’d never stand up in court before succumbing to her illness right in front of their very eyes. Frigga knows she should be grateful that she is finally holding Loki in her arms again, _yes_ , but after everything she discussed with Dr. van Dyne, after everything she read and talked about with Thor, she knows it’s not Loki right now, _not really_ , _no_ , because Hela … because whatever happened in LA … God, Loki is so cold, _so_ , _so cold_ , and her fingertips can feel out thick scar tissue on his spine and his shoulder blades through the fabric of the black oversized shirt he’s wearing and she doesn’t even want to know … because Loki is whimpering quietly, his nose pressed into the space between her breasts, shaking inside her arms, his bony back arching up and down and Hela just … She just barged into their lives once again with bad tidings but, then again, she looks so pitiful as she spits blood into the tissue until her coughing fit finally subsides but, _still_ , she took Loki away and now he’s even more broken and _—_

 _Riiiing_.

She startles and Loki does too and Frigga presses him closer, which should be impossible given that he’s clinging to her like a magnet already.

“Are you, uh, expecting anyone?” Hela finally brings herself to ask, shifting uncomfortably, as Thor is talking to someone at the door, their words muffled by the distance.

Frigga shakes her head and then she hears heavy footsteps as Thor leads whoever rang the bell into the house, saying, softly, “And you’ll see that Loki can’t answer any questions right now,” and then walks into the living room, followed by Detective Coulson who is flanked by Officers Romanoff and Barton. “Please, don’t make him, I’m begging you.”

 _Oh no_.

“Oh, fuck,” mumbles Hela, parading her notorious eloquence once again, her eyes going wide when she spots the LVMPD badges. She jumps to her feet, suddenly looking like a cornered animal with the blood around her mouth and her panicked gaze. “Crap. Did you really _have_ to call the cops on me?!” she hisses.

“Yes,” Thor hisses back, his beautiful blue eyes still ablaze with the fires of his wrath, and Hela flinches. “I mean, _look_ at him! This is your doing!”

It might be her doing but then, again, it might not be because this happened before, in this very house, before Hela waltzed back into their lives and maybe Loki was fine before, maybe it’s this house ... Maybe he’d be happier if he forgot … how can she even think … Frigga presses Loki closer and ever closer because he’s in no state of mind to endure any of this right now—how did Thor even think this was a good idea, well, he probably didn’t, his anger makes it impossible for him to think sometimes—and she’ll protect him from it even if it is the last thing she will ever do.

“Hela Davis?” Coulson asks. “My name is Detective Coulson, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. You are under arrest for child endangerment. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against—”

“—me in a court of law, yes,” Hela snaps, talking over him. “I fucking know the drill.”

The detective cocks a brow. “I bet you do.”

Hela inhales a long, trembling breath. “Okay, yes,” she concedes, coughing up a few more droplets of blood when she exhales, wiping her mouth with her sleeve. “I messed up, okay? Big time. But if you do a drug screen, you’ll see that I’m clean. I was in rehab until this morning and I brought the kid back first thing, I swear. You can check it.” She searches for Frigga’s gaze, actual tears pooling into her eyes pale-blue eyes and Frigga’s own anger slowly withers. “I know I fucked up, okay? I wasn’t thinking straight before but as soon as I came to my senses, as soon as he told me he _wanted_ to go back, I came here. I fucking _came_ here, okay? That has to count for _something_!”

“It does,” Frigga says and she means it.

“Well,” says Coulson, nodding in Romanoff’s and Barton’s direction. “Bring her downtown and get her a doctor. We’ll talk later.”

Thor is gloating when the officers march Hela off, watching her with his arms crossed in front of his broad chest and a devilishly gleeful grin pulling at his lips that would probably scare Frigga if she chose to dwell on it. But then Hela tells them to get Loki checked out and Thor’s victorious grin abruptly dies.

“Checked out how?” Coulson asks and Frigga is grateful that he’s taking the lead because all she can do is cradle her son close when the horrors of the implications wash over her.

“Medically,” says Hela, accompanied by more coughing. “Just to make sure he’s … Hell, do a rape kit. He, uh, the people he was with, they aren’t … He might have suffered—”

“ _Suffered what_?!” Thor blares, sounding exactly like his father.

“I don’t know,” Hela whispers, sobs almost. “Just make sure, okay?”

“I’m gonna fucking kill you,” Thor spits.

Coulson eyes him intently. “You okay there, son? Are the two us gonna have a problem?”

Thor’s nostrils flare as though he was a bull in a fighting arena that just spotted a glimpse of red. “I’m not your son,” he snaps before he comes to his senses and adds a “sir” for good measure.

Despite her best efforts, Frigga blanks out for a moment. She knows she should be glad that Hela brought Loki back and she doesn’t want Hela any harm. The fates know the woman suffered enough misery in her comparably young life, she’s dying of cancer, _goddammit_ , and now that she has her boy back, nothing else should matter, right? Well, yes and no. Frigga still wants answers and if Loki doesn’t even remember _them_ , heaven only knows what else he doesn’t remember and if they don’t arrest Hela now, she’ll probably vanish off the face of the earth _yet again_ and Frigga might never find the answers she’s been losing sleep over for three whole months.

Detective Coulson seats himself onto the couch next to her, uninvited. “Loki?” he asks softly but her son just holds on tighter to her, shivering slightly. “Can you tell us what happened?”

“He obviously can’t,” Thor hollers. “Are you blind?”

“Thor,” Frigga manages, if only barely. “Honey, please. Try to calm down.”

“I’m going to call an ambulance,” Coulson announces, whipping out his phone.

“No! He only just got back,” Thor fumes. “Just let him calm down before you take him away again, okay? He’s not … He can’t deal with … Just let him be, please. He needs his Mom! Just let him rest, _please_!”

“Did you not hear Miss Davis? He needs medical and psychiatric care,” Coulson replies firmly but not without compassion even if Thor is too blind too see it. “And afterwards, as we talked about before, we need to determine appropriate cust—”

“His therapist, Dr. van Dyne, she recommended a facility for trauma patients in Arizona,” Frigga cuts him off, avoiding her son’s gaze because the one time she mentioned it, Thor went all rigid and told her that she possibly couldn’t “pull a Dad” and cast Loki out again the minute he walks through the door. “She said they’ll be able to take good care of him until he has learned to live with his dissociative disorder.”

Thor breathes in and out, huffing and puffing like a steamroller.

“Does that sound okay to you?” Coulson asks, carefully placing a hand on Loki’s back. He starts wailing again as soon as the cop’s hand touches his back.

“See?” Thor bristles. “That’s exactly why I _said_ —”

He can’t finish because Loki leaps to his feet all of a sudden and then throws himself against the floor-to-ceiling window behind the couch, banging his forehead against the glass.

“Loki,” Frigga whispers, trying to shush him, trying to hold him back, but he dissolves into gut-wrenching screams and Coulson calls nine-one-one then and, if his hard breathing is any indication, Thor is this close to punching the detective in the face before he composes himself enough to walk away but not enough to control his temper, _no_ , _oh please no_ , instead of calming down, he grabs one of the flower pots and hurls it into the glass doors leading onto the porch, throwing it with a furious roar, sending shards flying everywhere, which leads to Coulson lunging after him, asking him if he needed a bit of fresh air to cool off. And, through it all, Loki howls and whimpers and keeps hurting himself and Frigga doesn’t know how she’s holding on to her sanity, how she’s been holding on to it for this long after everything that happened to her family this year, and she foolishly, naively wishes that Odin was there to ground her but, of course, he isn’t, when was he _ever_ , he’s always at work during times like this, never there to comfort them, and it’s her own fault actually because he might be here if now she hadn’t filed for divorce and, _holy mother of Jesus_ , her reasoning is so off and she’s so in over her head and Thor is crying now too, _no_ , he isn’t just crying, he’s flat-out, honest-to-god bawling and Detective Coulson is pulling him into a hug and then, finally, she hears the first wail of the siren in the distance.

 _Thank goodness_.

* * *

Everything that came after that is a blur. Despite her best efforts, Frigga’s mind melted like snow in the sun and she only experienced the drive to the Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit after Loki pitifully tried to fight off the paramedics through an odd haze that safely kept reality at bay.

Loki is sedated now, seemingly asleep in peace, snoring as faintly as a newborn kitten, his lips standing slightly apart. There are a lot of people bustling about in his hospital room, disinfecting, cleaning, stitching and then bandaging the wound on his forehead, and Thor is standing next to her, still brimming with anger.

They’ve just begun to remove Loki’s clothing to thoroughly check him for injuries, starting with the scarf. Frigga can only stare as they peel away the layers, two things hitting her, one shortly after the other, slowing her world to a stop in that peculiar kind of way people describe the realization that their car will inevitably spin off the road. They’re bagging his clothes for evidence, which means there is going to be an investigation leading to a trial and this isn’t over yet, _oh no_ , it isn’t over by far because Loki … And then she retches as soon as his naked torso is fully exposed and then her knees almost give out and Thor draws a shaky breath as he steadies her and the doctor gasp in shock.

Next to her, Thor tenses up again because, _by all that’s holy_ , there isn’t an inch of Loki’s skin that isn’t injured and it doesn’t make sense, not at first, what all these marks actually _mean_. His arms are littered with self-harm cuts but there are ligature marks too, around his wrists, his ankles, his chest and his neck … there are … _Do a rape kit_ … someone choked him recently, there is a necklace of fingerprints around his neck and there are burn marks on his chest and … and … _DO A RAPE KIT_ … are these whipping wounds and scars on his back? The sight is enough to wish a slow and painful cancer death upon Hela against better judgment for traumatizing Loki for life as an infant and then giving him to her to fix him with the motherly love pouring into her from a river that never dries only to take him away again and then allow something like … like THIS to happen to him. To her own child.

To Frigga’s son.

She knows that Hela’s life has been traumatizingly dire. She knows that they are privileged and Hela wasn’t and that she had to endure unspeakable abuse herself but isn’t that all the more reason to … How could she let something like this happen to her own flesh and blood after what happened to her? How can trauma and violence repeat themselves in such gruesome, twisted ways? How can … how can these things keep happening to her boy? Her beautiful, delicate, fair-skinned boy, molested by god only knows whom and for god only knows how long, how often, _abused_ , left by his birthmother, violated as a toddler, beaten by his father and his brother, violated yet again as a teenager, his bruised, emaciated frame a witness that is excruciatingly mute and yet so abysmally loud.

 _People only ever have it in for Loki_.

 _I always thought he was a sissy when_ , _in reality_ , _everything has been so unfair from the very beginning_.

Unfair is an understatement by several magnitudes. It’s unfair that she got a parking ticket the other day even though she only popped into the drug store for four minutes tops. No, what happened to Loki isn’t _unfair_ , it’s … she can’t even find a word for it except for weighty expressions like blasphemy or terrorism or conspiracy but neither of them sound right and they jumble together and then tie into a knot of lead that sinks to the pit of her stomach. Recovery and therapy isn’t ‘only’ going to be about Loki’s childhood traumas now or the shock of the adoption or the bullying, no, now there’s this ugly monstrosity he’ll have to deal with on top of everything else just because Hela couldn’t find it in her to call them.

Next to her, Thor is one breath away from tearing the building down with his bare hands and now they’re bringing out the rape kit and …Frigga’s natural instinct is to stay with Loki, to watch over her sick, fragile son in case he wakes but, then again, Loki is sedated and safe. He’s taken care of by medical professionals and she’s come a long way. “Come on,” she whispers, tugging at Thor’s massive arm. “Let’s get some air.”

“No,” he protests.

“Yes,” Frigga says, dragging him outside. “You’ve seen enough. I don’t want you to have to live with … anything else.”

“I’m gonna kill her!” Thor thunders again, punching the wall. “I’m gonna fucking kill her!”

“You’re not,” Frigga says, pulling him towards her. “Thor, please. Honey, listen to me. I’m as angry as you are—”

His eyes burn hotter than hellfire itself. “You really think so?”

“Okay, probably not,” Frigga concedes. “I think it’ll be quite impossible for me to compete with your temper but”—at that, Thor rewards her effort with the faintest of not-quite-showing smiles—“Hela is with the police now and, believe it or not, Detective Coulson is on our side. She’ll get the punishment she deserves and, even if she doesn’t, it won’t really change anything, right? What’s done is done.” She firmly squeezes his hands in her own. “If you got to hurt her, you’d feel better, I’m sure, but it wouldn’t last. You’re not a bad person, honey. You’d regret it very, very soon.”

“You think I could?” Thor asks, out of the blue, looking all kinds of terrified. “Kill her?”

“No,” says Frigga, without a moment’s hesitation. “Do you?”

“I don’t know. I’m just …” Thor throws his hands up in the air in surrender. “No, I mean … I _do_ wanna strangle her because, like, how could she _not_ see … She just … I built a fucking _gravesite_ for him, Mom! I said my goodbyes … I …”

“I know,” Frigga shushes him and then sweeps him into a hug.

“He was suffering out there and I … I didn’t even believe you, Mom,” Thor sobs against her chest. “I just …I thought you were in denial … I convinced myself he was dead and he was out there all this time and I didn’t save him. I didn’t fucking … How could I believe …”

“Hey,” Frigga shushes him. “You drew a conclusion based on solid evidence and your case was watertight.”

“And yours wasn’t,” Thor counters, wriggling out of her embrace. She never saw him cry before all this after he grew into a teenager but even so, whenever he cries, he composes himself so quickly whereas Loki would just cry for … She banishes the thought, trying to focus on the son who’s hurting in front of her very eyes right now, trying to focus on his words. “Honestly, your spiritual nonsense about how you felt Loki was alive because he touched you in your dreams was just … ridiculous. And still, _you_ turned out to be right. Why are you always right?”

“Because I am your mother?” Frigga tries.

“That line might work on a kid half my age,” Thor snorts but his anger is finally evaporating. “I’m serious. How did you … know?”

“I just did.”

“But _how_? You’re not even related!” Thor exclaims before it dawns on him what he said. “Whoa, I didn’t mean like _that_. It’s just that … I don’t understand.”

“You don’t have to be related to be … You can have that connection with a child, a romantic partner or a soul-mate. You just _know_ ,” Frigga says, placing her hand onto Thor’s chest. “In here. You just _do_.”

Thor chews on that for a long moment. “But aren’t you mad? At Hela? I mean, don’t you want to …” His anger flares up again, the look in his eyes articulating very well what he didn’t say, but this time, he dutifully engages in his breathing exercises. He, too, has come a long way.

“Yes,” says Frigga, guiding him outside as he slowly calms down. “It’s hard to digest, I know. It’s hard to digest for me too. I can’t even think straight either right now but, then again, the most important thing is that Loki is alive. He’s back. He might have a chance to heal and whatever Hela did or didn’t do … I mean …”

“He was abused,” Thor says in a very small voice. “Like … He was … These injuries …”

“I know. But he’s alive and we’ll deal with it in due time, okay? We’ve come this far,” Frigga insists even if she doesn’t believe it herself at this very moment. “He’s alive, honey. Your brother is alive. It’s all that matters.”

He nods but he’s still unconvinced.

“Come on, let’s get you a coffee.”

“A coffee?” Thor echoes. “Wired as I am? You really wanna do that to yourself?”

Despite herself and everything else, Frigga chuckles. God, how much she loves him.

“It’s okay. I’m good,” says Thor. “I think. As long as I don’t have to see Hela’s face.”

* * *

That was a whole ass lie of course and they both know it. Nothing is okay or good. Not when someone hurt his baby brother like that and his so-called mother let it happen. Nope, Thor can’t even think of Hela right now because if he does, if he imagines her with a guy who is capable of chaining a barely sixteen-year-old kid to a bed or a wall or _a_ _fucking surgical table_ and branding him with cigarette ends, stun guns and the devil only knows what else and choking him with his bare hands and ripping his back open with a whiplash many, many times, inflicting those scars that are now arching down his brother’s spine in a furious, asymmetrical crisscrossing pattern of pure agony and—

 _Stop with the goddamn surgical tables_ , Thor commands his own mind but he watched too many horror movies with Loki when they still got along and his mental cinema screen won’t stop playing them all, mashing them together into a bricolage of sadistic torture scenes until all he sees in his mind are white surgical tables and brown leather straps á la _Saw_ or _Hostel_. His hands clench into fists at the thought of his little brother being forced into … yeah, what exactly? Hela is a drug addict, so her ex probably was too and everyone knows that addiction sometimes leads to prostitution and what if … _Do a rape kit_ , that bitch said with her whole damn chest. _A fucking rape kit_.

Which, of course, doesn’t do shit to calm him down.

Neither does the sight of Loki chained to his hospital bed with four-point restraints when they enter the room again after he and Frigga took a walk. _Holy shit_ , _holy freaking fuck_. He looks so fragile and sick in his hospital gown, and he’s hooked up to an IV bag, a heart monitor and a feeding tube. There are two doctors and two nurses and a woman dressed in black street clothes that seems vaguely familiar. “What the fuck?” Thor snaps before it registers that he’s standing face-to-face with Dr. Strange, who wasn’t exactly his number one fan when they met last time. “Why did you have to tie him up?”

“Thor,” Frigga urges.

“No, Mom. Restraints are only gonna make him worse,” Thor gushes. “He’ll panic when he wakes up. You know he will. This is … _wrong_. He’ll have another meltdown. Why doesn’t anyone fucking believe us? We _know_ him, for God’s sake! It’s not like we’re fucking _strangers_!”

“Stop shouting,” warns the woman and as she speaks, Thor remembers who she is. “We’re all trying to do what’s best for your brother.”

It’s Maria Hill from Child Protective Services.

 _Yikes_.

Thor gulps. _Count slowly to four as you inhale_ , _count slowly to eight as you exhale_ , _focus on feeling the air move in and out of your lungs_. “What are you doing here?”

“My job,” Hill replies coolly.

“Chances are, he’ll panic either way because he might not have any recollection of how he got here, isn’t that right? Plus, he already hurt himself badly enough to give himself a concussion,” says Dr. Strange. “It’s safer that way, Mr. Odinson. Trust me.” His tone carries an unspoken yet unmistakable directive for Thor to fucking contain himself.

“We are just doing our jobs here,” the other doctor adds, rather pointedly.

“And who are you?” Thor asks briskly.

“Sam Wilson.” He stretches out his hand. “Psychiatrist and PTSD specialist.”

This should be a good thing, Thor tries to tell himself as he shakes the other man’s hand, even if the guy looks far too young to be specialized in anything.

“It’s going to be alright. They know what they’re doing, honey,” Frigga says flatly, again with the bloody pet names in front of literal strangers, before she focuses her attention back on the doctor. “How is he? Physically, I mean? Apart from the concussion? Have you, uh, finished your examination?”

“For one, he’s down to hundred-sixteen pounds,” Dr. Strange begins. “Blood pressure, heart rate and body temperature are all extremely low and chances are he’s severely malnourished. We took a blood sample and will do a full screening of his vitals, drug testing included.”

Frigga nods and Thor can’t help but think that his Mom looks like a zombie in the harsh fluorescent PICU light.

“He was already underweight when I last him but now that his weight is this low, you’ll probably have to consider treatment for anorexia.”

Dr. Wilson nods his agreement.

“Anorexia?” Thor echoes. Yes, _okay_ , his little brother is a literal skeleton and, if not for his injuries, he might have looked like a posterchild for a campaign warning against eating disorders, but as it is, the image that came to mind when they undressed him and filled Thor’s throat with bile was that of a concentration camp fugitive. “He’s not starving himself!” Although he definitely was earlier but, then again, it’s possible that he was just depressed and lost his appetite because Loki can’t possibly think he’s fat like some High School girl prodding her non-existent body fat with her finger and crying in front of her mirror because she’s allegedly sooo big. “They probably didn’t _give_ him any food.”

“That’s possible as well, yes. The bottom line remains though. He’s severely underweight. His blood test results will tell us more. Apart from the scars and the ligature marks, which will probably not fade any time soon,” Dr. Strange says, “his body shows no sign of lasting physical damage. We did an MRI and x-rays and, thankfully, most of his injuries are external. His collarbone injury healed as well, even if it did so in the wrong position.” He pulls out an x-ray and taps onto a small ridge as he holds it out to them. “That’s where the bone snapped”— _because I fucking made it snap and we both know it_ —“and then, probably because Loki wasn’t careful enough, they formed this misalignment. You can feel it with your finger when you stroke over it. We’ll have to check with him if it’s causing him any pain. If it does, I’m afraid, we’ll have to break it again so that it can heal properly this time.”

Frigga nods and wets her lips but it’s like she lost her voice.

“The good news is, the tissue of your son’s anus is undamaged and there are no traces of semen, which means that he had no recent intercourse, consensual or otherwise,” Dr. Strange goes on. _Duh_ , thinks Thor but despite the arrogant vibe the doctor’s giving off, he seems competent enough and it is a good thing that Loki hasn’t been touched like _that_ on top of everything else. “We took oral and genital swabs to test for STDs just in case.”

Okay, Thor is sure that he’ll puke out the casserole _this time_ but all that happens is that his stomach gives another violent lurch and he very inelegantly dry heaves in front of the assembled company.

“So, he’s, uh, gonna be okay, yes?” Frigga asks finally.

“Physically, yes,” says Dr. Strange. “But mentally?”

“I highly doubt it,” Dr. Wilson finishes.

 _No fucking shit_ , _Sherlock_.

“What’s gonna happen now?” Thor asks the CPS investigator after the doctors exited the room. “To Loki? To us?”

Maria Hill sighs. “Look, Mr. Odinson, I know you’re very protective of your brother but I hope you’ll agree with me that inpatient psychiatric and medical treatment is the only appropriate custody for Loki until further notice.”

Thor knows that this is true because, _dammit_ , Loki hurts himself as soon as they let him out of sight for one fucking minute and he needs to gain weight to become strong and healthy again and he needs professional help to figure out how to deal with his alters and how to deal with his traumas, _yes_ , Thor _knows_ all these things, but he _just_ got his kid brother back after thinking he was dead for months and he didn’t even get to speak to him or hug him and now Frigga wants to take him to Phoenix Ari-fucking-zona just because Dr. van Dyne took a job there as if there are no other trauma therapists in their own goddamn state and Thor has to decide between football and his brother and he doesn’t want to decide between two so important things and family therapy will be impossible with Frigga and Loki there and him and Odin here and it’s just not fair that their family had to fall apart.

He just doesn’t want to accept that, not now that he’s got Loki back. Maybe not ever.

“Thor?” asks Frigga.

“What about after?” Thor brings himself to ask because he can’t agree, won’t agree. “Is there still a chance you may let him live with us again? Or with my Mom? Or are we … I mean, did we, uh, screw up because we let him get this bad or didn’t save him? Are we … horrible people? Are we”—he gulps—“abusers?”

Frigga stares at him and the look in her eyes is half-terror, half-blood-weeping-from-her-own-heart.

“You’re human,” says Maria Hill. “And I know you love him. Personally, I don’t think you’re a bad seed but I haven’t even spoken to Loki yet. I have no idea what he wants, what he feels, how it’s been like for him and his other personalities, and as long as I don’t know that, I can’t possibly tell you anything.”

There is a weighty pause before she continues.

“The doctors will call me when he wakes up. Detective Coulson and I, we’ll interview him as soon as Dr. Wilson deems him stable enough.”

Frigga nods and forces out a soft thank you and then Maria Hill takes her leave and breezes out of the room, leaving them alone with a sleeping, softly breathing, tied-up Loki.

“Should we call Dad?” Thor asks when the silence building up between them becomes unbearable.

“I don’t know,” sighs Frigga after a few beats, swallowing hard. “Should we?”

“I don’t know,” sighs Thor. “We should probably wait, don’t you think?”

The question and the sensation it comes with make it official with a heart-shattering clarity that almost crushes the air out of Thor’s lungs: The bond of their family is broken and it will take an awful lot of time, effort and patience to mend it. It will be hard work, painful and endless. It will involve a lot of tears and meltdowns and misunderstandings and shouting and raw nerves. It will be terrible and exhausting and maddening.

It will be worth every second of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *sighs*
> 
> This is it. We've reached another milestone in this verse and I'd thank you all for reading. I treasured each and every word of encouragement and appreciation on this part of the journey. I am currently working on the second Interlude, which is trickier than I thought because it's from Leah's POV, but it should be up soon because I have a long-ish car ride ahead of me tonight and those always do the trick in figuring out the glitches in my writing.
> 
> Thank you. See you soon, I hope x

**Author's Note:**

> Comments always keep me going and are a huge motivation for me to work on the next chapter with more enthusiasm, so any support is always greatly appreciated. Constructive criticism too, by the way.
> 
> See you soon x


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